Aunt Olive in Bohemia

Pippa had gone with Alan to look at flats. The occupation was an intense joy to her. If he had decided on all the flats on which she had set her heart he would have taken at lea...

Miss Mason threw a large shovelful of coal on to the fire, then turned to Barnabas, who was sitting astride on a chair, his arms resting on its back, and looking at her with a s...

Pippa had been wont to haunt Jasper's studio a good deal. His pictured saints appealed to her imagination. She loved the brilliance of their robes and the gold of their backgrou...

There comes a day in the lives of some of us when everything appears as if it were pursuing its ordinary and normal course. We get up in the morning and go through the usual rou...

It is strange how a name long unspoken and unheard, once coming again within one's ken, comes again and again before one, and in the most unlikely and unexpected ways.

Jasper Merton was a man who had been born with a curious kind of conscience. He was perpetually looking at it, dusting it, and seeing that it kept in what he considered perfect...

Barely half an hour after Miss Mason's sudden decision Barnabas set out for a small and rather unwholesome street somewhere in the direction of the World's End. It was given by...

The Duchessa di Corleone was on her way back from Italy. She had said good-bye with a little pang to the gallery, and to the courtyard with its golden oranges and marble statues...

Miss Mason was sitting in the lounge of the Wilton Hotel. Mr. Davis--the lawyer--had given her the name of this hotel, telling her that it was both quiet and comfortable.

And so Barnabas departed to Paris in the attempt to find some clue regarding the scrap of humanity which the Fates had led to Miss Mason's studio. It was not that Miss Mason car...

Dan Oldfield was standing in front of an easel on which was a minute canvas. The scene depicted thereon was a pastoral of Mesonnier-like detail. At the moment Dan was engaged in...

She was sitting in the drawing-room of her house on the Embankment. The windows looked on to the river which she loved. The room was full of flowers which she also loved. She ar...

Below her, some couple of hundred feet, ran a little brown stream, on the banks of which a man in tweed clothes was walking. He held a fishing-rod, and every now and then he pau...

Outwardly Miss Mason was not unlike certain pictures of the fairy godmother who escorted Cinderella to the ball. Being a fairy godmother, no doubt that old lady's heart was ever...

Jasper found Miss Mason a little hard to understand during these days. She had a way of looking at him and then giving vent to odd little chuckles of laughter. He hoped she was...

That same afternoon the five other male occupants of the studios dropped in to tea with Barnabas. They frequently did. They liked the cakes he bought at a shop in the Fulham Roa...

Once upon a time, as the fairy tales have it, there was a certain country town. It was a sleepy little town, where few things happened. It was like a dog grown old and lazy with...

Miss Mason was sitting in her studio at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon. She was reading a small, red-covered book, within whose pages was enshrined a brief account of the life...

And with her advent came one of the brightest threads which the Fates were using to weave into the hitherto sombre pattern of her life. For there is never any knowing what the F...

During the time that elapsed between their departure and four o'clock Miss Mason was distinctly restless. She began to sew at some fine white cambric into which she was putting...

Far away from London Pippa was swinging on a gate. Her dress had become rather faded from much sunshine, and her straw hat had been baked quite brown. She had it well pulled dow...

It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening, and through one of the windows of the newly-furnished studio a shaft of sunlight had found its way. It formed a patch of light on the...

Pippa became part of the life of the six artists of the courtyard, and they all wondered, if they ever thought about the matter at all, however they had managed to get on withou...

And while the Music of the Heart was making incessant melody for Paul and the Duchessa, the Small Boy with drooping wings was still sitting disconsolate in the corner of Aurora'...

They were small and dapper Italians, these two, who had been appointed by the late Duca di Corleone as the executors of his will and the keepers of the letter.

February gave place to a stormy March, which ushered itself in angry and tempestuous. By the end of the month it was tired of its anger, and throughout April was like a child pr...

Paul had gone on bravely with his life. He knew that when Sara had gone out of his studio into the summer night she had taken something away with her, the something that was the...

Pippa adored it. She loved the quaint cottages, and the beach with the tarred nets spread out to dry, and the kindly fishermen who took her out in their boats, and who talked to...

Barnabas came into his garden in the early morning sunshine. His hair was still a little wet, for he had only just had his bath. He was wearing an old Turkish dressing-gown, pur...

"One must be blind not to see it," said Miss Mason. "I felt something was wrong before I went away, and since I've been back I've been sure of it."

They were both in her studio the day following the return of the donkey-party. They were awaiting the appearance of Andrew McAndrew, to whom Barnabas had written to come to the...

One day Paul took Sara down to Hampshire to see his mother, a white-haired old lady with a wrinkled face and a peaceful mouth, and eyes like Paul's. She took Sara at once to her...

After Michael had left, Sara went to the window and stood looking out at the trees on the Embankment. The heat of the summer had already caused their leaves to turn yellow.

And so it was that Paul and Sara did not spend their honeymoon in Paris as they had at first intended, but travelled direct through without stopping to the Casa di Corleone on t...