A. A. Milne

“ Heaven for three weeks, and it hasn't even begun yet." There was the splendour of it. It hadn't begun; it didn't begin till to-morrow. He went back in a dream to his packing. "Collars," he said, "shirts, ties—ties——"
Miss Gertie Morrison had not offered to help him this year. She had not forgotten that she had put herself forward the year before, when George had stammered and blushed (he found blushing very easy in the Muswell Hill boarding-house) , and Algy Traill, the humorist of the establishment, had winked and said, "George, old boy, you're in luck; Gertie never packs for me." ”

“ It isn't really a holiday; it's more to help her; she has a boarding-house too. And it really is Cliftonville—only, of course, it's silly of mother to mind having it called Margate. Cliftonville's much worse than Margate really. I hate it."
(This can't be Gertie Morrison, thought George. It's a dream.) ”

“ He had known very few women in his life, and he dreamed dreams about them. They were wonderful creatures, a little higher than the angels, and beauty and mystery and holiness hung over them. Some day he would meet the long-desired one, and (miracle) she would love him, and they would live happy ever afterwards at—— He wondered sometimes whether an angel would live happy ever afterwards at Bedford Park. Bedford Park seemed to strip the mystery and the holiness and the wonder from his dream. And yet he had seen just the silly little house at Bedford Park that would suit them ”

“ V John Lobey, landlord of "The Dog and Duck," is on the track of a mystery. Something to do with they anarchists and such-like. The chief clue lies in the extraordinary fact that on three Sundays in succession Parson has called "George Crosby; bachelor, of this parish," when everybody knows that there isn't a Crosby in the parish, and that the gentleman from London, who stayed at his inn for three weeks and comes down Saturdays—for which purpose he leaves his bag and keeps on his room—this gentleman from London, I tell you, is Mr. Geoffrey Carfax. ”

“ The foxhound puppy got up and came across the road sideways to him. "Welcome, welcome," he said effusively, and went round the tall, lean, brown gentleman several times.
"Hallo, Duster," said the brown gentleman; "coming with me to-day?"
"Come along," said the foxhound puppy excitedly. "Going with you? I should just think I am! Which way shall we go?" ”

“ I always called myself Rosamund in the country.... I hate men—why are they such beasts to us always?"
"They are beasts," said George, giving his sex away cheerfully. But he was not thinking of Traill and the Fossetts; he was thinking of himself. "It's very strange," he went on; "all the time I thought that the others were just what they seemed to be, and that I alone had a private life of my own which I hid from everybody. And all the time you ... Perhaps Traill is really somebody else sometimes. Even Ransom has his secret—his mother.... ”

“ Morrison throws up her eyes at Mr. Ransom on her right, as much as to say, "Was there ever such a boy?" and Miss Gertie threatens him with the potato spoon, and tells him not to be silly. Mr. Ransom looks approvingly across the table at Traill. He has a feeling that the Navy, the Empire, and the Old Country are in some way linked up with men of the world such as Algy, or that (to put it in another way) a Radical Nonconformist would strongly disapprove of him. It comes to the same thing; you can't help liking the fellow. Mr. Ransom is wearing an M.C.C. tie ”

“ When his father's solicitor recommended a certain Islington boarding-house as an establishment where a man of means could be housed and fed for as little as thirty shillings a week, and a certain firm in Fenchurch Street as another establishment where a man of gifts could earn as much as forty shillings a week, George found out where Islington and Fenchurch Street were, and fell mechanically into the routine suggested for him. ”

“ The terrible thing is that he cannot get hardened to it. He hates Muswell Hill; he hates Traill and the Fossetts and Ransom; he hates Miss Gertie Morrison. The whole vulgar, familiar, shabby, sociable atmosphere of the place he hates. Some day, perhaps, he will pull himself together and move again. There is a boarding-house at Finsbury Park he has heard of....
II If you had three weeks' holiday in the year, three whole weeks in which to amuse yourself as you liked, how would you spend it? Algy Traill went to Brighton in August ”

“ In his own house he would dress every night. He is fifty; tall, dark, red-faced, black-moustached, growing stout; an insurance agent. It is his great sorrow that the country is going to the dogs, and he dislikes the setting of class against class. The proper thing to do is to shoot them down. ”