Evelyn Sharp

“ All the people I saw convicted in the police court that morning went to prison while the sun shone; for it was one of those irrepressible summer days that even London smoke cannot succeed in dimming. The brilliance of it had touched the official soul of the constable who guarded the door; and the little crowd on the pavement, clamouring with or without justification for admittance, was at least being handled with wit and good humour.
"Only those under remand, if you please!" remonstrated the doorkeeper politely, placing on one side the little woman who was waving a visiting-card at him. ”

“ The little scullery-maid shook her head. "I shall not be there," she said. "I am only a scullery-maid; and no one, not even the Fairy Queen, can make me into a real princess."
"You are the hundredth Princess," declared the King; "and no one, not even the Fairy Queen, can make you into a scullery-maid."
"The ninety-nine other princesses have never picked the vegetables for the King's dinner," sighed the little scullery-maid. ”

“ And there by the bedside of Phyllis Hyam, before any one else in the house was astir, Katharine sat and pondered again over the events of the day before. They seemed just as tragic as ever, separated as they were from her by a few hours of forgetfulness; and she wondered miserably how she was going to take up her life as usual, and go about her work as though nothing had happened. "That is why it is so hard to be a woman," she murmured, full of pity for her own troubles. ”

“ The problem that had just been put into words by Charlotte Bigley was one that had exercised the ingenuity of everybody since yesterday morning. To do good works was the present ardent desire of all their hearts; but where were the good works to be found?
‘I suppose there’s always something to be done for somebody, only we’ve got to discover what it is,’ said Mary Wells, after profound reflection.
‘He did say life was full of little things that were waiting to be done, but it’s so easy to talk like that,’ complained Jean Murray. ”

“ So it was her usual smiling, rather impudent face that finally greeted Askett when he opened the door to her.
"So you didn't forget, after all? Made sure you would," he observed. "People who forget their own names can forget anything."
"I didn't forget my own name," said Anna, truthfully, a remark of which he naturally missed the point.
They did not talk at all for the first hour or so, and Anna began to feel distinctly bored. Being a model was not half so much fun as she had expected to find it, and it made her extremely sleepy. ”

“ Martin looked puzzled.
"Still, your silence is so full of sound," he said. The pine dwarfs laughed softly, so softly that most people would have called it only smiling.
"Real silence, the best kind, is always full of sound; and of course we only make the very best kind," they explained proudly. "Anybody can make the other kind of silence by taking the air and sifting out the noise in it. Now, we take the air, and when we have sifted out the noise we fill it with sound. That's a very different thing. The worst of it is," they added, sadly, "there is so little demand for real silence. ”

“ Deaf Robert looked up at the pine-trees overhead and down to the flowers at his feet. "I used to be able to," he said sadly, "but even the forest has grown silent now." Then he clenched his fists and looked imploringly at his father. "Must I live to the end of my days without hearing any of the things that other boys hear?" he cried.
"You are a little unreasonable, my son," said the minstrel. "Are not the beautiful sounds of life enough for you?"
"Enough?" said deaf Robert. "I want much, much more than that, father. Why, I want to hear the Princess cry!" ”

“ And may I make my confession too, Lady Joan? I was not sure that I did want you so desperately after you sent me away just now. But I found that I did directly you opened the door and the sunshine came in, and I can never do without you again. But it is better to understand one another at starting, isn't it?"
"Much better. And ideals are such bosh when we have grown out of our short frocks. So the understanding is quite complete; you don't know how much you love me, so we will call it desperately, and I don't know how much I love you, so we will call it desperately too. ”

“ It is very prosaic to have to acknowledge that a man's most characteristic pose is merely due to his laziness. On the whole, I am rather glad I am quite an ordinary person; I would much sooner be happy, even if it does make me vulgar."
"Happiness is like wine," said Paul, without heeding her. "It demoralises you at the time, and it leaves you flat afterwards. The most difficult thing in life is to know how to take our happiness when it comes."
"It is more difficult," murmured Katharine, "to know how to do without it when it doesn't come." ”

“ Even the drowsy sentimentalist, realizing, one might almost suppose, that his proper place was rather at a drawing-room meeting than at a street-corner one, went elsewhere in search of love and obedience; and the crowd of derelicts that remained, growing more numerous every minute, pressed closer and closer to the lorry till they swarmed up the wheels and over the sides and sat at the feet of the woman who had been where they had been, and suffered what they had suffered, for a cause they dimly began to understand because it appeared to be connected with prison and suffering. ”

“ In spite of the extra inch or two on the bottom hem of her frock, and the temporary smoothness that a vigorous application of a wet brush had produced on her hair, Babs saw with a kind of dismay that she was not made in the same pattern as the crowd of neatly dressed girls before her. None of them wore her hair loose and curly like her own, and none of them looked as though she did not know what to do with her hands. If only she could have held on to something, Barbara felt sure she would not have felt so shy or so helpless. ”

“ Prince Picotee had just built a fairy palace on the nursery floor, and he sat back on his heels and looked at it with pride. Surely, no one had ever built so fine a palace before in the space of thirteen minutes and a half! Not only were there two lofty towers that soared proudly upwards until they were actually as tall as the Prince himself, but there was a great arched doorway as well, with a flight of steps leading down from it away under the nursery table; and there was even a drawbridge, made of a single big brick and suspended by a piece of string. ”

“ Digby would never have thought of looking out for a wife at all if it had not been for my persuasions; he was far too fond of Ibsen, and Schopenhauer, and Bernard Shaw, and all those tiresome people. At all events, I never allowed a week to pass without asking him to dinner, and the picture of my domestic happiness must have done something for him. Ah, well, my work is done now; and thank God my ideal of friendship is too high to stand in the way of his marrying, though I have felt towards him like a sister, and it is hard at first to give up my place to another. ”

“ Why, you told me she had too much sense of humour ever to fall in love. Who's the chap?" It was very ridiculous, but he could not help the sudden pang of disappointment he felt on hearing that the other Anna was in love. It disturbed his impression of her, and he had not known until that moment how strong that impression had grown.
"Oh, he doesn't know she's in love with him, and she couldn't possibly let him know, because he might have a sense of humour too; and then he'd just scoff, and she'd want to kill herself. It—it's a tragedy to fall in love if you've got a sense of humour, isn't it? ”

“ He knew how to coax the flower fairies to speak to him, and how to find the wood fairies when they hid among the ferns, and how to laugh back when the wymps made fun of him; and, above all, he knew how to find his way to Bobolink, the Purple Enchanter, who knows everything. And he found his way to Bobolink, on the evening of that very same day.
Bobolink, the Purple Enchanter, sat on his amethyst throne in the middle of a grove of deadly nightshade. He was the ugliest enchanter any one has ever seen; and on each side of him sat an enormous purple toad with an ugly purple smile on his face. ”

“ It was not difficult to find Paul Wilton's chambers among the quaint old buildings of Essex Court; and Katharine, as she toiled up the massive oak staircase, stopping on every landing to read the names over the doors, felt that she had reached a delightful oasis of learning in the middle of commercial London.
"How splendid to be a man, and to have brains enough to live in a place like this," she thought enthusiastically; and then, with the cynicism that always dogged the steps of her enthusiasm, she added, "It probably only wants money enough, though." ”

“ Barbara flashed round upon her suddenly. ‘What’s the matter with my bringing-up?’ she demanded in a breathless voice. ‘My father brought me up, and no one in the whole world could have brought me up better than he has.’
‘That accounts for it,’ scoffed Jean. ‘Fathers can’t bring anybody up, especially girls. I’ve heard mother say so, lots of times.’
Barbara’s eyes were glittering brightly. ‘My father can,’ she answered swiftly. ‘My father isn’t like other people’s fathers. You shouldn’t judge my father by your father. ”

“ And finally she thought about nothing at all as she yielded to the drowsiness of the hot spring morning, and rested her cheek against a background of green creepers and became conscious of nothing but a confused medley of well-known sounds,—the loud ticking of the clock in the way trifles assert their importance after an event, the tuneless humming of the child on the floor, the warning bell of the postman's bicycle as he came round the corner of the street, and the splash of the ducks he frightened into the pond as he came. ”

“ But it is impossible to be happy for long when one is bewitched; and, one day, Kit found himself in a part of the forest that was more horrible and more frightening than any dark passage that was ever invented on the way to any nursery. It was not only dark, but it was strangely silent as well; and a curious feeling of gloom and unhappiness suddenly crept over Kit. If it had been a nice sort of silence, the sort we find when we get away from the other boys and girls into a place where it is quiet enough to hear the real sounds of the air, Kit would still have been quite happy ”

“ Truly, there is no end to the wonderful things that happen in Nonamia!
"Hullo!" said the traveller, smiling. "What is it like inside your castle?"
"It is not half so nice as I expected to find it," said the Princess, popping her head out of the top window. "You see, there is no one to play with; and even if your castle is the most beautiful castle in the world, it is always dull when there is no one to play with, isn't it?" ”

“ The courts had just risen, and the barristers in their wigs and gowns were hastening through the Temple on the way to their various chambers. It was not a day on which to linger, for a pitiless east wind swept across Fountain Court, making little eddies in the basin of water where the goldfish swam, and swirling the dust into little sandstorms to blind the shivering people who were using the thoroughfare down to the Embankment. ”

“ I was afraid, you see, that you might think the world was not a nice place to be in.’
‘I’m glad you spoiled me, and I think the world is a nice place to be in,’ answered Jill, laughing. ‘But what has that to do with Barbara’s not liking me?’
‘Well, you can’t expect every one to like you,’ said the old lady, in her brusque way. ‘Babs will like you well enough when she finds that she is still the Babe of the family, in spite of your being there.’
‘But–but I don’t like to feel that there is anybody anywhere who doesn’t like me,’ complained Jill, with a little pout. ”

“ One of them was different from all the others; it had a long bright tail that glittered like a cracker at Christmas time, and it was scurrying across the sky at such a pace that the rest of the stars had to get out of its way as best they could. Most of the people who looked out of their windows that night thought they saw a comet; but Jerry and Chubby knew better.
"Oh," they cried, clapping their hands with excitement. "There is our kite, and it is flying to the moon after all!"
"There's no doubt about that," said the wymp, who was still wimpling at them from the top of the thistle. ”

“ To be able to laugh at ourselves is the great thing," murmured Lady Joan.
"There is nothing so depressing," continued the musician, without heeding the interruption, "as the spectacle of a man who will not face his own wickedness—or even his own goodness. It is a sign of the age, this wretched spirit of compromise; we don't live in town because it is unhealthy, and the fogs are so bad—"
"My dear, that was not the reason," Lady Raleigh murmured—also unheeded. ”

“ Then, for the first time, Molly noticed that this strange little country at the back of the sun had no people in it; for, ever since she had waked up on the King's throne, she had seen no one except Skilful and Wilful and Captious and Queer.
"Where are all the other wymps?" she cried.
"Ah," they said, mysteriously; "most people don't know it, but the wymps go through the sun every morning and spend the day in making fun for the people on the other side. That is how the people down in the world are taught to laugh instead of to cry. ”