The majority of the dusting had been completed and already at least three families of mice had been removed from the Great Smials Library when Flory finally sat down for a cup of tea and slice of cake. All around her stacks of books lay in disorganized piles and orderly stacks. Flory was only now seeing the full extent of the job ahead of her. Even after the shelves had been cleaned she would then have to go through all the books and put them in some sort of order so that she knew precisely how many books there were.
It was a colossal task but Flory did not mind a bit, even if it took her a lifetime then at least it would be a lifetime surrounded by books. Flory drank the remainder of her tea and deposited the empty cup onto a copy of “Pigs of the Shire by Otto Burrows”. Then she noticed the book beneath it, or rather she noticed the piece of paper protruding from between the pages.
Carefully she pulled the piece of paper out and opened it up. It turned out to be a map, a rather sizeable map too, by some miracle of paper folding it at first appeared to be no bigger than a regular Quickpost envelope but when opened it was close to the size of a tablecloth. Flory was expecting another map of the Shire (she had already unearthed at least eight copies, including some that were clearly inaccurate) but it turned out to be a set of plans for the building of several new villages in the South Farthing. Flory squinted at the small flowing script and managed to pick out some names she recognised: Harville, Songburrow, Brightdown, Bramblebury, Old Furlong and Bannockbury.
All were laid out in a similar manner and dotted about the South Farthing. Some of the maps included details of features and buildings that had been there before the villages had been built, and Flory assumed that these features would have now been long demolished once the digging of the burrows started. Mostly it was old barns and other agricultural buildings, but on the plan of Songburrow she noticed a small mark in the Centre of the village. Most of the wording was smudged but Flory could make out the word “Burrow” written next to it and the mark itself looked very much like a large doorway.
Flory was very pleased to find such an old item and made a note to get it set in a frame of some sort. The next time she was over in Michel Delving se would take it over to the Mathom House and pass it on to Master Foxtail.
