✨🧦"It appears that one of your socks is blue & the other purple."🧦✨
Just before dawn, [Reynard Muldoon] rose quietly, got ready with the lights off so as not to disturb his roommates [at the orphanage] (they often snarled at him for reading in bed at night, even when he used a tiny penlight under the covers), and hurried down to the [street]. Miss Perumal was already waiting for him [in her car] - she had been too excited to sleep, as well, and had arrived early...
"Good morning, Miss Perumal," he said froggily. He cleared his throat. "I was glad to hear your mother's doing better."
"Thank you Reynie. Would you - " Miss Perumal turned then, took one look at him, and said, "You'll not make a good impression dressed like that, I'm afraid... [It] appears that one of your socks is blue and the other purple."
Reynie looked down at his outfit in surprise. Usually he was the least noticeable of boys: He was of average size, of an average pale complexion, his brown hair was of average length, and he wore average clothes. This morning, though, he would stand out in a crowd - unless it happened to be a crowd of clwns. He grinned at Miss Perumal and said, "I dressed this way for luck."
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"Luckily you won't need luck," said Miss Perumal... "Now please go change, and this time turn on your light - never mind how your roomates grumble - so that you may have better luck choosing your clothes."
Pages 7-8 of the paperback edition of The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart
I really found this scene fascinating. In the tv adaptation, Reynie explains that he didn't want to wake anyone up and I believe Miss Perumal tells him that that was "perfectly reasonable". But in the book, she tells Reynie to go back and change. This was the first difference between the tv adaptation and the book that I found. And I actually liked that Disney changed this scene slightly. The tv series gave a lot of "warmth" and compassion to Miss Perumal. Especially with the care package that she tried to send. Miss Perumal is a teacher I would have loved to have in grade school. Also I do like that Disney wove Miss Perumal's mother into a plotline, with the Emergency.