London Lavender

Having once decided--very much against my will (such as it is)--to leave my old single rooms at Mrs. Duckie's, the question where to live was before us. Far enough away to make...

One of the first questions which I put to Mrs. Wiles referred very naturally to the other residents of the house. The twins had severally and collectively assured us that they o...

Armed with a message of introduction from Mrs. Wiles, I called on Mr. Wiles at his place of business. He is to be found under the New Ape House. You knock on the closed door opp...

Naomi was very firm about my finding an occupation. Men must do something, she said. As for herself, she intended to retain her various poor protégés, and to continue to visit h...

"What we want," the Director said, "in particular, is young men and young women to be enthusiastic about these songs and dances and get them spread about;" and lunching with Nao...

So far I agree with Mrs. Wiles in thinking Mr. Lacey the pick of the house; but my opinion is of less weight than it might be since I have not yet met the others, except in the...

Mr. Dabney of _The Balance_ having asked me to his housewarming, I found myself in his new rooms at about half-past nine, prepared for an unwonted night of it. He pretends that...

It was the next morning, I think, that Mrs. Wiles entered the room in a state of high tension and handed me a letter. It came, she said, after Wiles had left for the Zoo, and wo...

We had at school a literature master who, in the course of many hundreds of discourses, made two remarks which have never left me; or would it not be fairer to say that of the h...

For some obscure reason Spanton has taken a fancy to me, and I must admit in return that I find something rather likeable in the scientific coolness of his mind and his dominati...

Naomi has had a letter from Mrs. Wiles saying that she was in trouble and badly in need of advice, and would Mrs. Falconer be so kind as to call. We therefore went round in the...

Mr. Lacey has now introduced me to Mr. Furley, with whom he divides the first floor, and whom we hear moving restlessly about overhead at all hours. On my mentioning this habit...

For old sake's sake I look in now and then on Mr. Bemerton and bring away a book, and recently I exchanged a few words with Mrs. Duckie, who is now very lonely by day, Be-trice...

Naomi's young friend Dollie Heathcote, who goes everywhere and does all the doggy things, as he calls them, was so shocked to find that I had never been to the Derby that, in or...

The scene from our box was remarkable. Beneath was stretched an undulating mass of people such as it is usual to call, in descriptive articles, a sea of humanity, and in the pre...

"Well," said Dollie, later in the afternoon, "how do we stand? I personally am forty pounds down. Farrar here is fifteen pounds down. Falconer, having neglected my advice, is se...

On the way back Sir Gaston told us of an incident many years ago, when he did occasionally put something on a horse--not as a habit, but if he heard anything.

We have just been down into Sussex to get some songs of which word had reached the Director, whose passion is the search for these ancient melodies. Where others hunt hares or f...

As it happened I was lunching at Queen Anne's Gate, and so I did pass through the square at the time named, glanced at our legislators--or at men who wished to look like our leg...

I took Lacey to the novelists' evening at Dabney's. "We'll just sit in a corner," I said, "and listen through the smoke. Unless, of course, you want to join in: I am quite certa...

Lacey and I walked back together, and in Kingsway we were overtaken by Spanton, who had been to a debate at Essex Hall. I observed at once that he and Lacey were antipathetic. I...

Since the events described in the last chapter I have been a traveller. I forget if I have mentioned that Naomi has a brother Frank, a journalist, with a pretty wife and three c...

Let me say at once that not only is the Rimini bathing the best in the world, so far as I know, but the sands are the best too; and the fishing-boats that flit in and out of the...

Mrs. Frank, I have not perhaps said, is one of the serious mothers who wish to make her children clever from the very first, and she has enlisted my services in the campaign, al...

We made an excursion or so, but not with any avidity; the sea was too good to leave, and it was the sea that we had come all this way to enjoy, as one cannot enjoy it at home ex...

I have had two lovers to see me: such different ones too. The first was Dollie Heathcote, very nervous--for him; which means that his eyeglass dropped ten times in a quarter of...

I still tingle with mortification over an experience at Dabney's last evening, the only satisfaction being that others tingle with me. We were talking of the supernatural--that...

The Director in his search for primitive English music had tidings of two old Morris dancers in an Oxfordshire village, survivals from the past when the whole of that county fos...

Naomi was very quiet at breakfast and, I thought, very beautiful. She startled me, afterwards, as I stood at the window, watching the rain, by asking quietly, "Which would you l...

Naomi's old school friendship with Mrs. Farrar, who is the daughter of the Rector of Winfield, is ripening into a new intimacy, into which I am being drawn. Not unwillingly; for...

Two pretty maids having arrived, one to take away the tea and the other to be with the little girls, Mr. Harberton suggested that we should go and see the Warden. This he said w...

It was just as I was putting away my book, quite late, that Miss Laura knocked at the door to say that Mr. Carstairs, the gentleman on the top floor, who had been ill for some d...

After visiting Naomi to tell her of the state of things upstairs, I returned to Mr. Carstairs' room and awaited the doctor. The sick man did not recover consciousness. It was th...

Heaven, I am glad to say, has been pleased to remove Mr. Wiles's adopted daughter from this transitory sphere. She was sickly when she came, and she never rallied, in spite of t...

After a period of reluctance, in which she very nearly lost all my good opinion, Miss Lavender Falconer entered this vale of tears at the most inconvenient hour possible, namely...

Mrs. Duckie, whom, after her long speech to me on the duties of husbands, I felt I must acquaint with Lavender's arrival, came up in her best bonnet to see the ladies. She had t...

Dollie and Ann walked in after lunch, looking, as I think now, a shade less natural than usual, but only a shade. Their visit was so remarkable that I wish to record its progres...