Walter De la Mare

Name: The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass
Author: Walter De la Mare

The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

Summary

“The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass”, published in 1923, is a work by Walter De la Mare. It explores elements such as Alice, Lennox and Sarah.

Quotes from The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (Walter De la Mare)

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ For certainly you are amused in a sort of fashion when any stranger you might suppose to be a little queer in the head proves perfectly harmless. Alice did not exactly like Sarah. But she could no more resist her advances, than the garden could resist the coming on of night.
Miss Lennox, too, it must be confessed, was a rather tedious and fretful companion for wits (like Alice's) always wool-gathering—wool, moreover, of the shimmering kind that decked the Golden Fleece. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ There you sits, even if the snow itself comes sailing in on your face, and alone you must be, neither book nor candle, and the house behind you shut up black abed and asleep. But, there; you so wan and sickly a young lady. What ghost would come to you, I'd like to know. You want some fine dark loveyer for a ghost—that's your ghost. Oo-ay! There's not a want in the world but's dust and ashes. That's my bit of schooling.”
She gazed on impenetrably at Alice's slender fingers. And without raising her eyes she leaned her large hands on the wall, “Meself, Miss, meself's my ghost, as they say. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ Sarah laughed for a full half-minute in silence, staring at Alice meanwhile. “'Patient'!” she replied at last, “Oo-ay. Nor to my knowledge did I ever breathe the contrary. As for staying; you'd stay all right if that loveyer of yours come along. You'd stand anything—them pale narrow-chested kind; though me, I'm neether to bend nor break. And if the old man was to look down out of the blue up there this very minute, ay, and shake his fist at me, I'd say it to his face. I loathe your whining psalm-singers. A trap's a trap. You wait and see!” ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ I may be dull and hot in the head at times, but I stand alone—eat alone, sit alone, sleep alone, think alone. There's never been such a lonely person before. Now, what should such a lonely person as me, Miss, I ask you, or what should you either for that matter, be meddling with your Maydays and your haunted gardens for?” She broke off and stared with angry confusion around her, and, lifting up her open hand a little, she added hotly, “Them birds!—My God, I drats 'em for their squealin'!”
“But, why?” said Alice, frowning slightly. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ As for Miss Lennox, she became testier and more “rational” than ever as she narrowly watched the day approaching when her need for a new companion would become extreme.
Who, however, the lover might be, and where the trysting-place, was unknown even to Alice, though, maybe, not absolutely unsurmised by her, and with a kind of cunning perspicacity perceived only by Sarah. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ She even began to long for the afternoon solely to be alone with it; and in the midst of the reverie it charmed into her mind, she would glance up as startled as a Dryad to see the “cook-general's” dark face fixing its still cold gaze on her from over the moss-greened wall. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Walter De la Mare, The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (1923)

“ She might, for example, like Miss Lennox, rest, too, if she pleased. Miss Lennox prided herself on her justice.
But then, Alice could seldom sleep in the afternoon because of her troublesome cough. She might at a pinch write letters, but they would need to be nearly all of them addressed to imaginary correspondents. And not even the most romantic of young human beings can write on indefinitely to one who vouchsafes no kind of an answer. ”

Walter De la Mare

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Quotes from The Riddle and Other Stories — The Looking Glass (Walter De la Mare)

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