The Happy-go-lucky Morgans

My story is of Balham and of a family dwelling in Balham who were more Welsh than Balhamitish. Strangers to that neighbourhood who go up Harrington Road from the tram must often...

In spite of old Ann and her kitchen fire I did not stay long in the house that day. The removal which had left it deserted and silent had made it also a little sordid: the famil...

One day as I was passing the library door with a pair of swan’s wings belonging to Philip, Mr Morgan stepped out. The look which he gave to the wings and to me compelled me to s...

I alone was listening to the swan story, but it would have been more in accordance with the custom of the house if it had been told in a large company out in the yard--in one of...

We recalled many memories, Ann and I, as we stood in the empty and silent, but still sunlit yard, on my last visit. At one moment the past seemed everything, the present a dream...

“It was a good day, Arthur, that first brought you to Abercorran House,” said old Ann, as she went to the door to deliver the stray pigeon to its owner.

One day at Abercorran House I heard Aurelius, Mr Morgan, and Mr Torrance in the Library, talking about wool-gathering. “Since Jessie told us about that river in Essex with the W...

Once or twice I joined Philip on a holiday in Wales, but not at Abercorran. It was years later that I found myself by chance at Abercorran and saw enough of it to spoil somewhat...

“You read and see, my son,” answered Mr Morgan. “Shelley could not pass himself off as an old man, though you know he did once claim to be eighty-nine, and Jeremiah would not ha...

Though he did not write of it, Mr Torrance would gladly talk of the house under the hill where he was born, of the surrounding country and its people. “I can only hope,” he woul...

To Mr Stodham, I think, Mr Torrance’s books were the man. He--perhaps he alone in England--possessed a full set of the thirty-three volumes produced by Mr Torrance under his own...

One evening Aurelius was telling Mr Stodham about the “battle of the green and scarlet.” “It took place in your country,” said he to the good man, too timid to be incredulous.

Long after his celebrated introduction to Abercorran House, and soon after Philip and I had been asking old Jack again about the blackthorn stick, Mr Stodham was reminded of the...

Ann was good to all beggars as well as to old Jack, the watercress man, and when I asked her about it once she told the story of the Castle of Leaves. This castle was a ruin abo...

Some time after the story of the Castle of Leaves, Mr Morgan took occasion to point out the difference between Ann speaking of the “beautiful long white beards” that men grew in...

Lewis never did raise a tower in the Wilderness. His towers were in the air. A wish, with him, was seldom father to any deed. I think he expected the wish of itself to create; o...

That winter when Philip was ill, for the first time, I used to spend every evening at Abercorran House, chiefly upstairs, reading aloud or talking. I was supposed to entertain h...

Roland and Jack were too much my seniors, and yet still too young, to take notice of me. But I could admire them from afar for their gifts and opportunities, their good looks, t...

“Silly,” he answered, “I haven’t got anything good enough to give, you know.... But I would give up going to Our Country for a whole year. I would do anything.... But this isn’t...

The perfume of the fur of the squirrel we skinned on that January evening--when Ann teased Philip about High Bower--I well remember. I liked it then; now I like it the more for...