Category: Humour

The Flower-Patch Among the Hills

Virginia and her sister Ursula are my most intimate friends. Virginia—really quite a harmless girl—imagines she has a scientific bias. Ursula—domesticated to the backbone—led a strenuous life in the pursuit of experimental psychology, till she switched off to wash hospital sau...

Chapters

16. Part 16

I missed her very much. She was only a very ordinary tabby, but she was a large, comfortable, homely sort of a cat; and she had made it part of her daily programme to come upsta...

8. Part 8

“Just as well. But—_four-and-six_! And she won’t finish it up neither; doesn’t care for cold poultry, I’m told; she’ll have a fair slice from the breast, but that’s all; never a...

6. Part 6

Had the woman replied, “From the butcher,” that would have been fairly incriminating, because, of course, we don’t require more than one sheep a week for home consumption in the...

15. Part 15

“My knees shook so I could hardly get into the train. I decided I wouldn’t let anyone see another bit of it; yet actually, when I was in Mrs. Davis’s shop and getting out the mo...

4. Part 4

But whatever the flowers, it is our custom to welcome all guests with rosemary, for I have discovered that the scent of it (even the sight of it) is a certain cure for the diver...

2. Part 2

“Oh, this is just a new zinc pail” (shaking the musical packet), “we need an extra one; and I’ve put in a little iron shovel, as I want one for my kitchen scuttle: and there’s a...

11. Part 11

However, I had just one faint glimmer of common sense left me, and that told me to take the first train going west next morning, which I did, leaving Paddington (in company with...

7. Part 7

Besides, she has no bump of locality (neither have I, for the matter of that); but I thought it would look better if two of us were arrested for wandering about without any visi...

9. Part 9

“I think, if you don’t mind, we won’t go upstairs till we’ve had some tea. We are absolutely prostrate, aren’t we, dear?” The flue-brush dipped slightly. “Could we have some tea...

12. Part 12

Just as I approached the gate, a pleasant-faced woman came out of the door and walked down the garden path between the French marigolds that edged the flower-beds. She was the o...

14. Part 14

For sheer undiluted racket, commend me to two earnest-souled girls, who get up early, and go about with a stealthy tread that creaks every old board in the place, and commune wi...

3. Part 3

During the drive up, the small white dog with brown ears, sits on the box seat, dividing his time between shrieking Billingsgate insults to every local dog (I blush for his mann...

10. Part 10

Miss Quirker—who always seems to have special and exclusive information about everything—said the creature was exactly over her bedroom chimney when the bomb was dropped; she he...

13. Part 13

The first time I heard it was one February—shortly after I had taken the cottage—the season above all others when the brooks and falls and mountain springs are over-full of wate...

1. Part 1

Virginia and her sister Ursula are my most intimate friends. Virginia—really quite a harmless girl—imagines she has a scientific bias. Ursula—domesticated to the backbone—led a...

5. Part 5

Does the wall face a sunless north? Very well; out come the ferns and up creeps the ivy; the Rock Stonecrop, with its blue-green stems and leaves (looking almost like a huge mos...

17. Part 17

“Then I’ll make a good selection, and have them sent home for you to choose from,” she replied, her face suffused with that joy-radiance that invariably overtakes a woman who st...