An Episode of Sparrows (New York Review Children's Collection)

An emergency meeting of the Mortimer Square Garden Committee has been convened to discuss a most alarming matter: Someone has been digging in the garden and making off with buckets of dirt. Miss Angela Chesney is sure that a gang of boys from run-down Catford Street is to blame. But Angelas sister, Olivia, isnt so sure. Olivia has always wondered why the neighborhood childrenthe sparrows she sometimes watches from the window of her houseare kept out of the private garden. Dont they have a right to enjoy the place, too? But neither Angela nor Olivia has any idea what sent the neighborhood waif Lovejoy Mason and her few friends in search of good, rich earth. Still less do they imagine where their investigation of the incident will lead themto a struggling restaurant, a bombed-out church, and at the heart of it all, a hidden garden.