‘My Great-aunt Alice, Miss Rumphius is very old now. Her hair is very white. every year there are more and more lupines. Now they call her the Lupine Lady. Sometimes my friends stand with me outside her gate, curious to see the old lady who planted the fields of lupines. When she invites us in, they come slowly. They think she is the oldest woman in the world. Often she tells us stories of faraway places.

“When I grow up,” I tell her, “I too will go to faraway places and come home to live by the sea.”
“That is all very well, little Alice,” says my aunt, “but there is a third thing that you must do.”
“What is that?” I ask.
You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”
“All right,” I say.

But I do not know yet what it can be.’

excerpt from Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney