The Raft

He might have been setting out for Australia or to explore Tibet, they made such a final matter of his going. The way in which he was waited on, considered and admired brought t...

For two hours they'd been inventing excuses for the Faun Man. He had told them to invite a party of their friends and he'd drive them to London. To go to London without permissi...

Life at its beginning and its end is bounded by a haunted wood. When no one is watching, children creep back to it to play with the fairies and to listen to the angels' footstep...

Peter's Christmas cab! Why a cab? What had he brought back in it and where had he hidden it? It must be something very grand and splendid to demand a cab. Kay coaxed him to give...

The castle stood like a gleaming skull, balancing on the edge of a precipice. The centuries had picked it clean. Through empty sockets, about which moss gathered, it watched whi...

Whenever Peter thought of the Misses Jacobite, the picture that formed was of four lean-breasted women, who spoke in whispers and sat forever in a room with the blinds down. The...

A summer's afternoon in London! The gold-gray majesty of the Embankment, basking in sunlight; the silver-gray flowing of the Thames beneath its many bridges; smoke, bidding a ca...

Ocky was like the jerry-built houses in which most of his life was spent: the angels who made him had had good intentions, but they had scamped their work. Consequently he was i...

At the Faun Man's birth an angel and a witch attended. The angel brought him the supreme gift of making people love him. The witch made the gift fatal, by wishing that he might...

Peter went laughing through the spring-world--it had become all kindness. In some strange way he had saved Kay's life. Everybody said so. He did not know how. And now she was st...

He was taking her in the wrong direction. Why? To reach the Red Lion he should have steered upstream. Far behind, chiseled out by the moonlight, the town stood sharp against the...

Harry, having hauled him back into college, had crept away sleepily, thankful that his watch was ended. Peter sat on by the open window, imagining and questioning. The wide whit...

Mr. Grace rose by stealth. Dawn had not yet broken. He groped his way into his clothes in the darkness; he did not dare to light the gas. Clutching his boots against his breast,...

The train swung down the shining rails and rumbled into Paddington. Passengers pulled down their parcels from the racks, jumped out and disappeared in the crowd. Peter sat on. T...

It was all up. A warrant was out for the arrest of Ocky. Accusers came forward from all directions--people whom glib promises had kept silent and people who had kept themselves...

And he refound her, when he had almost forgotten her. In those four long years, which stretch like a magic ocean between the island of boyhood and the misty coasts of early manh...

Miss Lydia Rufus was a prim person. Judging from her appearance one would have said that in her case virtue was compulsory through lack of opportunity. And yet she had had her “...

It was the way in which the boy had said “just anybody.” Peter gazed beyond the gate into the green mysterious depth of country--an Eden from which he was excluded by that hosti...

Mr. Somp rubbed his nose, finished off his beer and winked at the barmaid. Then he turned with a smile of tolerant patronage to his future father-in-law. 'Any'ow, Cockie, h'I di...

It was the month of June. A breeze blowing in at the open window fluttered out the muslin curtains and shook loose the petals of roses standing on the table. A milk-cart rattled...

Had they caught him? Ever since the beginning of the adventure Peter had wondered interminably how it would end. He hadn't been able to see any ending. It had seemed to him that...

It was his own fault; he knew it in after years. Barrington was partly responsible for Jehane's second marriage. It was he who suggested that, since Jehane was not happy with he...

The bettering of Mr. Waffles marked the beginning of that intimate and freakish association which was to shape the careers of the children of both families. Though their relatio...

The world is a mirror into which we gaze and see the reflection of ourselves. So far to Peter it had been a foreground of small boys and their sisters, with a background of occa...

The Faun Man looked up from his writing. Peter had been with him on _The Skylark_ for five days--five gorgeous days. He had found to his surprise that the golden woman was of th...

Peter can quite well remember the events which led up to that strange happening; not that the events or the happening seemed strange at the time--they grew into his life so natu...

She filled all his thoughts; the world had become new to him. Picture-books were no longer amusing; just to be Peter with a little strange sister was the most fascinating story...

Jehane laid aside her book leisurely and rose from her chair; he was even better to look at than she had expected. It was his clothes that impressed her first; the gray tweeds f...

When Barrington called on the Professor next morning, he did not see Jehane. She had stayed in bed for breakfast, to keep out of his way. She did not trust herself to meet him b...

There was one more letter from Jehane. She wrote that Ocky had just returned from London, where he had been on important business. She understood that he had been too hurried to...

There was no withstanding his questions. Peter had to be told why: it was because he was too Peterish. He was going for the good of Kay. All these years in trying so hard to lov...

As they neared the empty house, Peter was about to thrust his head out of the window. He had the words on the tip of his tongue to say, “Stop here, Mr. Grace.” So much were they...

In the first stabbing sense of loss he hoped that he had caught the contagion and might die. Life without her was unthinkable. Then, through very excess of grief, his feelings b...

People who loved Ocky Waffles always loved him for his good; he would have preferred to have been loved for almost any other purpose. Affection, in his experience, turned friend...

Peter kept awake for his parents' home-coming. Long before the cab drew up he heard the jingle of the horse's harness and was out of bed. The key grated in the front door; in th...

Peter took all the credit to himself--she was his baby. And why not? Nobody, not even his mother or father, had had anything to do with her advent. For many months after Philip'...

The college and its guests were assembled. Peter and his eight, with members of the crews they had defeated, were seated at the high table. The bump-supper was in progress. Scar...

Jehane had been granted her wish and she was frightened. The river stretched before her, a lonely ghost, glimmering between soaked fields and beaten countryside. The rain-fall m...

A don's daughter at Oxford has plentiful opportunities for becoming an old maid. Undergraduates are too adventurously young and graduates are too importantly in earnest for marr...

At first, after repeated and urgent requests, he was allowed to sit by the window in a dressing-gown. Then he was allowed to get partly dressed and to ramble about the house in...

Strong sunlight streamed across the foot of his bed. Below, in the quad, he could hear the clatter of breakfast-dishes being cleared away. Fumbling beneath his pillow, he pulled...

To you I owns h'up; I 'as me little failin's, especially since Cat's Meat------He could never mention Cat's Meat without wiping his eyes. “But if I 'as me little failin's, that...

Tree-Tops stood half-way up the hill, looking out across a terraced garden. At the foot of the hill lay a plain, where hamlets nestled beneath the wings of trees, and meadows wa...

It was the longest day in June. The room was stifling, filled with greenish light which fell in stripes through the slats of the closed shutters. On the tiled floor water had be...

Peter's oar gripped the water. The seven men behind him swung out. For a second he raised his eyes from the boat, searching the faces on the barge. She wasn't there--Cherry. The...

He punted down the last stretch of river. It had been Peterish, yet appropriate of him to choose this means of travel. He had arrived in Henley that morning. Had he gone by road...

Peter asked to see his father alone. They went up together to the study. Barrington knew that a confession was coming. He was curious. Peter's sins were so extraordinary; they w...

Barrington did everything on a large scale--he knew he was going to be a big man. He arranged his surroundings with an eye to his expanding future. It was so when he bought his...