Read For Sure for Free Online Page A

her back.
    â€œYous’ll never guess!”
    Unable to contain herself any longer, she showed them the object. Carmen and Terry were enraptured.
    â€œWell, don’t that beat all!”
    â€œWhere did ya find it?!”
    â€œOut where dey sells dem antiques on John.”
    Terry took the small Babar lamp from Josse, for a closer look.
    â€œShe’s chipped, but der’s nuttin’ wrong wid dat. Goes wid de rest.”
    But Carmen had no desire to decorate the Babar with a bunch of secondhand junk:
    â€œSure an’ are we gonna fill up de place wid old stuff all chipped and faded?”
    â€œNaw. I only meant if der’s a bit of old stuff, it goes wid de whole idea of de lofts, recycling an’ all dat.”
    Carmen nodded, and took up the statuette in turn.
    â€œWouldn’t be so bad if we could get our hands on a couple more.”
    Josse was bursting with pleasure:
    â€œI found dem! Googled Babar din’t I, and der dey was! On eBay! Secondhand an’ bran’ new! We could set a few down on de tables. Not on all of dem, just here an’ der, so long as it’s in keeping wid de décor. If dat’s wot we want, I mean . . .”
    88.6.1
    The Babar
    Coincidence? The fact that the alphabet is sometimes referred to as the ABCs, and that these three letters, a , b , and c , the first three of the alphabet are together the first letters of 38 percent of the names of colours in the pourpre.com web site’s dictionary and 23 percent of those of Wikipedia’s List of Colours?
    89.92.9
    Questions without Answers
    As Étienne had more or less appropriated Aragon’s Blues and “I Sing to Pass the Time,” while “Elsa” had become Carmen’s song, Terry decided to learn another just for Marianne. He sang it for her one evening in her bedroom, with Étienne in attendance, since it was a première and he’d been there for the others. The song Terry had chosen was slightly more difficult than the earlier ones because it included some unusual vocal embellishments, which Terry wanted to reproduce as well as possible. He launched into “The Stranger” like a clown on a highwire, and soon had the kids laughing. At the beginning of the third verse, when Terry sang: I took the hand of an ephemera / She followed me into my house . . . Marianne imagined that this was how Terry had become her dad, and she paid even closer attention to what followed all the way to the end of the song.
    90.1.8
    Chansons
    The progression of the category “Useful Details” into “Interesting Details” is itself interesting. Whereas with useful details, one is justified in asking useful to whom, useful for what, in the case of interesting details, we ask ourselves interesting to whom, and why interesting. From an indirect object we shift into subordinated and coordinated clauses. The beginning of writing, in a sense.
    91.19.1
    Interesting Details
    But there was no denying it: Freud’s works had not been published by La Pléiade. Ludmilla seemed hurt by this omission; she disappeared into the small office at the back of the bookstore like a fox retreating into its den.
    â€œEveryting dat Freud wrote was published in French by dis here publisher. Nuttin’ of his was published by La Pléiade.”
    Terry handed Camil Gaudain the scrap of paper on which he’d written the address of Freud’s publisher.
    â€œYou’re sure?”
    Camil Gaudain’s surprise was comforting to Terry and, in a way, legitimized Ludmilla’s dismay.
    â€œYa. Ludmilla was a dog’s age surfin’ on de Internet she couldn’t believe it.”
    92.8.6
    Didot Books
    Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar’s Travels was published by La Librairie Hachette in 1939. The original version was subsequently reprinted, notably in October 1979, in Hachette’s Lutin Poche, L’école des Loisirs paperback edition. Recopied here (and translated)