Jeffrey Strangeways by Jill Murphy, 1990.
Jeffrey lives with his widowed mother in a Medieval village (not a realistic one, this is a fairy tale type story), where his mother supports the both of them by selling her knitting. However, when his mother breaks both of her arms after falling off of a cart, eleven-year-old Jeffrey must find a job and earn some money. As a young boy from a poor family, there aren’t many options for him at first, and he doesn’t try very hard for the ones that are available because what he really wants to do is to be a knight. As a boy from a non-noble family, it isn’t likely that he’d ever actually become a knight, but it’s all that Jeffrey has ever dreamed of.
One day, after Jeffrey has failed to get the jobs that were available in a nearby town of Axington, he is walking home, sad and worried about what his mother will say, he meets a knight. In fact, it’s not just any knight but a famous one, Sir Walter! Jeffrey is thrilled to meet him. Sir Walter asks Jeffrey for directions and invites him to join him for supper.
The two of them discuss what it’s like to be a knight. Sir Walter tells Jeffrey that it’s not all as glamorous as people think it is. Some parts are very difficult, and he has to travel a lot on his various assignments, keeping him away from his family for extended periods. Unlike real, historical knights, who would work for a lord, Sir Walter works for an agency in Axington called Free Lance Rescue Services Limited, which gives him his assignments. They send knights like Sir Walter to rescue damsels in distress or deal with dragons or ogres. Although it’s not easy work, Jeffrey likes the sound of it!
When Jeffrey returns home and his mother finds out that he didn’t get a job, she is upset. Jeffrey tells her about his meeting with Sir Walter, and she points out that, even though it’s exciting, he really needs to focus on finding work because they’re running out of money. Seeing his mother so upset, Jeffrey lies to make her feel better, telling her that Sir Walter has recommended him for a job with his rescue agency. His mother is doubtful at first, knowing that knights are usually from noble families and that her small son hasn’t had any training or shown any fighting ability. Jeffrey reassures her that he’ll probably just be helping in the office until he gets more training. To Jeffrey’s shame, his mother believes him and is proud of the job that he doesn’t have.
The next day, after his mother sends him off to his first day on his new “job,” Jeffrey decides that the only thing to do is to go to the agency in Axington and try to find out if he can get a job there, or failing that, anywhere he can in order to make things right with his mother. When he gets to Axington, he is hungry, so he asks at a food stand in the marketplace if he can help out for a while in exchange for some food. He spends the morning peeling potatoes in exchange for lunch. However, although it’s boring work, Jeffrey does get a good meal out of it, and he catches the eye of a leatherworker, who compliments him for working hard. Jeffrey confides in the leatherworker that he’s really hoping to get a job at the rescue agency, and the leatherworker tells him that his fiancé is the secretary there. He gives Jeffrey a message to take to the secretary, and Jeffrey sees it as his opportunity to ask for a job.
When Jeffrey delivers the message to the secretary (which is an invitation to join her fiancé for lunch), the secretary tells him that the rescue agency has no job openings at the moment, but that she’ll pay him a penny to watch the office and her mother’s rambunctious dog, Lancelot, while she’s at lunch. It’s not much, but a penny is enough to buy his mother a nice dinner, so Jeffrey takes the job. The secretary tells him a little about how the office works, but she doesn’t expect anything to happen while she’s at lunch because nothing ever does.
However, while the secretary is away, a message comes in that Sir Walter is in trouble! Sir Walter is in the cave of an evil ogre and needs help at once! Jeffrey tries to find the secretary to tell her and ask what to do. When he can’t figure out where she went to lunch, Jeffrey decides that there’s no time to waste and that he must rescue Sir Walter himself!
Although Jeffrey is eager to help Sir Walter, he does worry about the lies that he has told his mother about his new “job”, the fact that he isn’t really qualified for what he’s doing and doesn’t even have permission to be doing it, that the ogre might well end up eating him as well as Sir Walter, and that he left a mess in the office when he ran off on his rescue mission and is currently in possession of a dog that doesn’t belong to him. The book is a fun adventure story, but it makes some good points about truthfulness and responsibility as well.
Although Jeffrey really only brought the dog along because he had nowhere else to leave him, it is really Lancelot who defeats the ogre, partly by accident. At first, Jeffrey is tempted to claim the victory for himself, but he decides to be honest and admits the truth about the ogre’s defeat to Sir Walter. Still, Sir Walter is grateful and offers to sponsor Jeffrey for knight school and give him a part-time job polishing his armor. Jeffrey accepts, and he also gets to keep Lancelot, who needed a new home anyway, although his mother says that he will have to be responsible for the dog and its training.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
Mystery Back of the Mountain by Mary C. Jane, 1960.
When they get to Maine, they meet Uncle James’s lawyer, Mr. Palmer, to collect the key to the house. Mr. Palmer tells them that the house has a few items in it that could be considered valuable antiques, including a portrait of the woman that Uncle James had wanted to marry, Drusilla Randall. The children’s father asks Mr. Palmer more about Drusilla Randall, and he says that all he knows is that she had an argument with Uncle James and then disappeared. He thinks that she just left town, although he says that there are rumors that Uncle James may have murdered her. Mr. Palmer thinks that the rumors are ridiculous and doesn’t take them seriously, but Stevie and Anne are disturbed at the idea that their relative may have been a murderer, or that people thought he was. Mr. Palmer also mentions that Drusilla’s sister, Marion, has decided to return to her family’s old house for the summer as well, so she’ll be living close to their farm.
The house is certainly an isolated place, and their closest neighbors, the Hodges have an old grudge against Uncle James. The unethical business deal that Uncle James did years ago involved buying some of the Hodges’s family’s best land. Bert Hodges, who was young at the time, says that the deal ruined his father’s life, and it’s making his miserable, too, because he really needs that land to make his farm profitable. Anne hears this from Bert’s young niece, Oleva, an orphan who has come to live with her aunt and uncle. Although Uncle Bert is strict with her and somewhat bitter about the past and the family’s circumstances, Oleva likes her aunt and uncle and wishes they would adopt her, giving her the stable home she’s longed for since her parents died and she began being traded around among her relatives. However, Bert doesn’t have much faith in other people, and even though he likes his young niece, is afraid to commit to adopting her.
Anne feels badly that Uncle James’s land deal seems to have ruined people’s lives. Oleva also tells her something disturbing about Drusilla, the girl that Uncle James loved. They were supposed to be married when Drusilla turned twenty, but she disappeared before that happened, and most people think that she drowned in the natural pool on Uncle James’s property. It’s deeper than it appears at first, and some things belonging to her were found nearby, so everyone thinks that she probably drowned and that her body is still somewhere at the bottom of the pool. Whether her death was an accident, suicide, or murder is still unknown.
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