The Extra Day

The day was hardly born, and still unsure of itself, when a robin with its tail cocked up stood up alertly on the window-sill of Uncle Felix's bedroom, peeped in through the ope...

"Uncle," he began with a rush lest his courage should forsake him, "where does everything come from? Everything in the world, I mean?"--then waited for an answer that did not come.

Adventure means saying Yes, and being careless; children say Yes to everything and are very careless indeed: even their No is usually a Yes, inverted or deferred. "I won't play,...

The country house, so ancient that it seemed part of the landscape, settled down secretively into the wintry darkness and watched the night with eyes of yellow flame. The thick...

But the children were not always so vindictive and blood-thirsty. All three could be very tender sometimes. Even Maria was not wholly implacable and merciless, she had a pretty...

Tim's "particular adventure" was of another kind. It was a self-repeater--of some violence, moreover, when the smallness of the hero is considered. Whether in after-life he beco...

The children had never been to London, but they knew the direction in which it lay--beyond the crumbling kitchen-garden wall, where the wall-flowers grew in a proud colony. The...

Uncle Felix paused over his last bit of bread and jam, Tim and Judy cocked their ears up. Maria's eyes stood still a moment in the heavens, and the Tramp stopped eating. He pick...

For the Night-Wind already had a definite position in the mythology of the Old Mill House, and since Uncle Felix had taken to reading aloud certain fancy bits from the storicaln...

Church was very--that is, they enjoyed the service very much, without knowing precisely why they liked it. They joined in the hymns with more energy than usual, because they fel...

Consciousness was first--unconsciousness; the biggest changes are unconscious before they are conscious. They have been long preparing. They fall with a clap; and people call th...

They went into the house as though wafted--thus does a shining heart deduct bodily weight from life's obstructions; they had their tea; after tea they played games as usual, qui...

He was a grey and nameless creature of shadowy outline and vague appearance. The eye focused him with difficulty. He had an air of a broken tombstone about him, with moss and li...

Meanwhile their father alone grew neither older nor larger. His appearance did not change. They could not imagine that he would ever change. He still went up to London in the mo...

The story of the dragon-fly marked a turning-point in their lives; they realised that life was crammed with things that nobody could understand. Daddy's reign was over, and Uncl...

He looked at his watch a second time, and found that it was later than he had supposed--eleven o'clock. In the act of winding it, however, he paused; something he had forgotten...

Meanwhile the coveted fortnight drew towards a close. It had begun on a Friday, and that left two full, clear weeks ahead. It had seemed an inexhaustible period--when it started...

But, though he appears in this chapter, he disappears again so quickly that his being mentioned in a sentence all by himself should not lead any one astray. Jinks made a false e...

Judy, Tim, and Maria were just little children. It was impossible to say exactly what their ages were, except that they were just the usual age, that Judy was the eldest, Maria...

Hardly had Judy closed her eyes for the second time, however, than the globular object she had noticed in the corner stirred. It turned, but turned all over, as though it were a...