How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Aunt Fannie thumped the marble. "I've been having trouble with this thing. It'll go in reverse, but I can't get it turned around to tell futures. Look there."
Though I dreaded another view of the rain barrel, I chanced a look. The crystal ball was crowded with humans in peculiar caps and wooden shoes.
"Oh for pity's sake," I said. "It's gone all the way back to old Dutch days." (5.55-57)
All Helena wants is to learn about her future, but Aunt Fannie's crystal ball really wants to show her the past. What do you think the "old Dutch days" tells us about Helena's past? Why is the crystal ball traveling so far back in time?
Quote #5
I'd have taken my chances back home. Gladly. But you can't go back, not in this life. You have to go forward. (6.11)
When it comes to traveling across the Atlantic, Helena and her siblings are super scared—so scared, in fact, that Helena just wants to go home. She wants her past life back again. What do you think about Helena's statement that she "can't go back" in life? Do you agree that she can't return to her past?
Quote #6
How I longed for home then. Our old home in the kitchen wall behind the stove, in our matchboxes with the scrap quilts and the human-hair mattresses.
I had led us away from all we knew in order to keep us together, to be family. Now look at us.
Louise (Mousie!) and Camilla as if I didn't exist. And Beatrice, who was either terrified, lovesick, or sound asleep. And Lamont gone gladly off into the unknowable world of boys. Mouse Scouts indeed. (7.77-79)
Helena has just one wish: to go back to her past. And take a look at her tone—she sounds nostalgic and sad to us as she remembers the details of her old digs.