I suppose the librarian thought it was kinder saying Ms Watts might harm her than if she told Ms Watts she looked too likely to run with the scissors, cut her own fingers with the guillotine paper trimmer or hurt herself in some other equally bizarre fashion.

I know one librarian who would never lend scissors or paper trimmers because she believes almost everybody in the world wants to cut all the pictures out out of all the library books.
Unfortunately her suspicion had evidence to support it.
Many of the science books in the library she managed had been defaced by the religious folks in the town.