E. Nesbit

“ THE AUNT AND THE EDITOR
Aunt Kate was the great comfort of Kitty’s existence. Always kindly, helpful, sympathetic, no girlish trouble was too slight, no girlish question too difficult for her tender heart—her delicate insight. How different from grim Aunt Eliza, with whom it was Kitty’s fate to live. Aunt Eliza was severe, methodical, energetic. In household matters she spared neither herself nor her niece. Kitty could darn and mend and bake and dust and sweep in a way which might have turned the parents of the bluest Girtonian green with envy. ”

“ Maurice Brent knew a great deal about the Greek anthology, and very little about women. No one but himself had any idea how much he knew of the one, and no one had less idea than himself how little he knew of the other. So that when, a stranger and a pilgrim hopelessly astray amid a smart house-party, he began to fall in love with Camilla, it seemed to be no one’s business to tell him, what everybody else knew, that Camilla had contracted the habit of becoming engaged at least once a year. ”

“ The stranger sat down again, and began to read the Spectator. Nina had no papers. The train moved on an inch or two, and the reddening yellow of the fog seemed like a Charity blanket pressed against each window. Three of the bunches of violets shook and vibrated and slipped, the train moved again and they fell on the floor of the carriage. Nina watched their trembling in an agony of irritation induced by the fog, the delay, and the persistent silence of her companion. When the flowers fell, she spoke. ”

“ I know I’m an abject duffer, but there it is—I can’t face it.”
Vincent was sympathetic, though he had never known a night-terror that could not be exorcised by pipe, book, and candle.
“I know, old chap. There’s no reasoning about these things,” said he, and so on.
“You can’t despise me more than I despise myself,” Edward said. “I feel a crawling hound. But it is so. I had a scare when I was a kid, and it seems to have left a sort of brand on me. I’m branded ‘coward,’ old man, and the feel of it’s not nice.” ”

“ I did not know where she lived; she had been at the inn, but probably only for lunch. I should never see her again, and certainly in that event I should never see again such dark, soft eyes, such hair, such a contour of cheek and chin, such a frank smile—in a word, a girl with whom it would be so delightfully natural for me to fall in love. For all the time she had been talking to me of architecture and archæology, of dates and periods, of carvings and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling in love with the idea of falling in love with her. ”

“ A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded cheek. The old lady put up her gloved hand and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She got up and walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.
“If you are going to do it,” she said in a voice that was hardly audible, “I have been used to live among beautiful surroundings—I should like to end my days among them. I do not come of a long-lived family. You would not have long to wait for your freedom and your second wife.”
Never in all his days had Michael known so sharp an agony of embarrassment. ”

“ Now fear is more wise than cunning, so, whereas he had sought for hours with his lantern and with all his thief’s craft to find the way out, and had sought in vain, he now, in the dark and blindly, without thought or will, without pause or let, found the one way that led to a door, shot back the bolts, and fled through the awakened rose garden and across the dewy park. ”

“ Perhaps you do not know that there are ways of observing strangers other than by the stare direct. He looked sulkier than ever: but he also had eyes. Yet he, too, was far from staring, so far that the indignant Nina broke out in a distracted whisper: “There! you see! I’m not important enough for him even to perceive my existence. I’m always expecting him to walk on me. I wonder whether he’d apologise when he found I wasn’t the station door-mat?”
The stranger shrugged his shoulders all to himself in his second-class carriage when the train had started. ”

“ Then the thief turned away from the arched emptiness of the grand staircase, and in a far corner of the hall he found himself speaking in a whisper because now it seemed to him that nothing would serve but that this clamorous silence should be stilled by a human voice.
“The old man said it would be thus—all emptiness, and not profit to a man; and he died, and I tended him. Dear Jesus! how our good deeds come home to us! ”

“ He left a note for Mrs Sheepmarsh, and a cheque in lieu of notice; and letter and cheque were signed with his name in full.
He went back to the old life, but the taste of it all was gone. Shooting parties, house parties, the Brydges woman even, prettier than ever, and surer of all things: how could these charm one whose fancy, whose heart indeed, wandered for ever in a green garden or by a quiet river with a young woman who had served in a tobacconist’s shop, and who would be some day his brother’s wife? ”

“ She had always a sheaf of dull-looking letters to answer, so Kitty could only tell Mary in the kitchen under vows of secrecy, and Mary in the kitchen only said: “Well, to be sure, Miss, it’s beautiful! I suppose you wrote the story down out of some book?”
Therefore Kitty felt that it was vain to apply to her for intellectual sympathy.
“I will write to Aunt Kate,” said she, “she will understand. Oh, how I wish I could see her! She must be a dear, soft, pussy, cuddly sort of person. Why shouldn’t I go and see her? I will.” ”

“ Her sunshade was white, and so were her gown and the hat that lay beside her. Since her accession to fortune Rosamund Rainham had worn nothing but white.
“It is the prettiest wear in the world,” she had told Constance Grant; “and when you’re poor, it’s the most impossible. But now I can have a clean gown every day, and a clean conscience as well.”
“I’m not sure about the conscience,” [Pg 114] Constance had answered with her demure smile. “Think of the millions of poor people.”
“Oh, bother!” Miss Rainham had laughed, not heartlessly, but happily. ”

“ There was no work to do. Stephen was a solicitor by trade; but, in fact and perforce, an idler. No business came to him. All day long the steps of clients sounded on the dirty, old wooden staircase—clients for Robinson on the second, for Jones on the fourth, but none for Guillemot on the third. Even now steps were coming, though it was only ten o’clock. The young man glanced at the marmalade jar, at the crooked cloth stained with tea, which his laundress had spread for his breakfast.
“Suppose it is a client——” He broke off with a laugh. ”

“ Arrived at Mill Vale the Slade students jumped from their carriage to meet a wind that swept grey curtains of rain across the bleak length of the platform.
“And we haven’t so much as a rib of an umbrella between us,” sighed Molly, putting her white handkerchief over the “best” hat which signalised her Saturday to Monday with her friend. “You’re right: that man is a pig. There he goes with an umbrella big enough for all three of us. Oh, it’s too bad! He’s putting it down—he’s running. He runs rather well. He’s exactly like the cast of the Discobolus in the Antique Room.” ”

“ Edward had shared Vincent’s room, and Vincent, alone of all men, shared Edward’s secret.
And now, in Paris, Rose speeding away towards Cannes, Vincent said: “Let’s look in at the Musée Grévin.”
The Musée Grévin is a wax-work show. Your mind, at the word, flies instantly to the excellent exhibition founded by the worthy Madame Tussaud, and you think you know what wax-works mean. But you are wrong. The exhibition of Madame Tussaud—in these days, at any rate—is the work of bourgeois for a bourgeois class. The Musée Grévin contains the work of artists for a nation of artists. ”