E. F. Benson

“ We are happy, aren't we? I wonder if Algernon and Eva were really as happy, even at that moment, as we always are!”
They had come near to the stream that flowed by the bottom of the garden, the bank of which was a tangle of flowers.
“Loosestrife, meadow-sweet, marsh-marigold, willow-herb,” said Philip. “Delicious names, are they not?”
The sound of shrill juvenile voices was heard, and turning a bend in the lane, they came opposite the pool where Philip had thrown the razor-blade. There on the bank were half a dozen small boys in various degrees of nudity, and rosy from their bathing. ”

“ Not knowing exactly what an ice-ship was, and being aware that his readers would be similarly ignorant, he evolved a beautiful one out of his inner consciousness that “skimmed along” on a single runner like a skate. It was not, he reflected, any less likely that it should keep its balance than that a bicycle should. ...
Suddenly he laid down his pen. His imagination was beginning to hurt him. It would be a terrible thing if Phœbe's cat, while it prowled though the herbaceous bed, stepped on the blade of the safety razor. ”

“ Philip's Safety Razor
Up to the time of Philip's obsession there cannot have been in all the world a happier couple than he and his wife. As everybody knows, the ecstasy of life has its home in the imagination, and Philip and Phœbe Partington lived almost exclusively in those realms which were illumined by the light that never was on sea or land. ”

“ He and Phœbe had driven out in their motor-car one afternoon, and had dismissed it two miles from home in order to have the pleasure of walking back through the flowery lanes. Philip was something of a botanist, and since he was now engaged on the chronicling of the reunion of Eva and Algernon, which unexpectedly took place in a ruined temple near Rome, he wanted to refresh his memory by the sight of the glories of the early English summer, in order to deck the flowery fields in which the ruined temple lay with the utmost possible lavishness of floral tapestry. ”

“ In this way Philip made acquaintance with the subject-matter he would be employed on next morning, and Phœbe learned how that which she had written yesterday had turned out. Philip had never any criticism to make: his wife's imagination seemed to him one of the most glorious instruments ever devised for the delectation of the literary, and she often said that of all contemporary novelists her husband was the only man capable of handling the situations she poured out in this unending flood. ”

“ Phœbe looked hugely delighted and returned the compliment.
“And there are some very pretty girls working there,” she observed slyly.
An hour afterwards they were padding in felt slippers round the room where bombs were packed with a fatal grey treacle, one spoonful of which was sufficient to blow them and the whole building into a million fragments. A new type of bomb was being made there, consisting of a cast-iron shell fitted with a hole through which the grey treacle was poured; an iron stopper was then screwed into the hole. ”

“ Then he set to work again on Eva, who presently ran her ice-boat ashore below the Star and Garter hotel. But half the morning had already gone, and he had scarcely yet made a beginning of the morning's work.
Phœbe was unusually buoyant at lunch time to-day, but for once her cheerfulness failed in shedding sunshine on Philip.
“My dear, I have got over such a difficult point,” she said. “Do you remember how Moses Isaacson got Algernon to sign the paper which acknowledged that he was not Lord St. Austell's legitimate son?” ”

“ He never hesitated for a word, for he had at his command the entire vocabulary of English clichés, and he often got through two instalments before lunch. At one precisely the parlourmaid came in, and groping through the fog of tobacco-smoke, opened all the windows and began to lay the table. ”

“ There is a great deal in Mr. Etherington's remarks.”
“I don't agree. I should think with our experience we ought to be able to describe New York without going there. We didn't find it necessary to go to Athens, or Khartoum, or Mexico.” ”

“ I only ask you to respect my feminine weakness and not make me come with you among all those horrid submarines.”
They sealed their compact with a kiss.
By the time Phœbe had interviewed her cook, her husband had already written his letter applying for his passport, on the grounds of artistic necessity in his profession. She read it through with high approval.
“Very dignified and proper,” she said. “By the way, dear, there will be no work for us this morning. We are going over the factory for explosives with kind Captain Traill. ”