The Tower Rooms

NATURALLY it was not news to me when old Dr. Grayson told me I was tired. There are some things one knows without assistance: and for two months I had suspected that I was getti...

THE letter went, and we waited for a reply: Madge feverishly, I apathetically, and Colin with a good deal of unhappy anticipation: he hated the whole business. I know the poor b...

‟I BEG your pardon for tumbling over you in such a way,” he said. “Awfully rude of me—but I hadn’t time to think. The car went wrong, and I never thought we’d catch the train—ha...

My responsibilities were varied. It was mine to superintend the early toilet of Judith and Jack: mine to keep a watchful eye on the vagaries of the parlourmaid, who was given to...

HAPPILY for me, the spirit of work did not claim Mrs. McNab very violently during my first week at The Towers. There were occasional periods during which she remained in seclusi...

‟WE want to get up a big boating picnic, Mother,” Beryl McNab said one morning at breakfast. “Everybody is coming: the crowds from Willow Park and Karinyah, and a few people fro...

MY queer encounter with my employer did not, luckily, hinder my sleep: I went to bed, and knew nothing more until Julia brought me a cup of tea at seven o’clock. It was long aft...

DR. FIRTH appeared next day after breakfast and borrowed me, with the children, for the day. Mrs. McNab was immersed in writing, and seemed glad to let us go. She had shown real...

My employer’s voice made me jump. I had slipped away from the drawing-room, where I had been playing accompaniments since dinner. It was a still hot night, following upon a day...

“She put her head out at me when I did be sweepin’ the landin’ outside her door. ‘Let you be tellin’ Miss Earle I’d like to see her up here,’ says she: ‘an’ I’ll be takin’ all m...

THE certainty that I possessed an employer with a mind more or less unhinged deepened throughout a long afternoon during which I found it difficult to adapt myself to the varyin...

“Don’t tell me unless you want to, Mrs. McNab,” I said, pitying the poor, strained face. “You are just tired out, and I know that your hand is hurting. Do rest quietly on my bed...

IT was lucky for us that all the house-party were tired that night. Dancing was often kept up at The Towers until long after midnight; but on this occasion the strenuous day in...

“There’ll be mighty little catching done, if you ask me,” was Harry’s reply. “The black trackers can’t come: they’re busy on that murder case up in the Mallee, and can’t be spar...

“No—anything but that! Harry is so young—and so proud. I cannot let him share the knowledge of disgrace. Life would never again be the same to him. I have tried so hard to keep...

AS soon as I was in dry things I slipped into Mrs. McNab’s room, my heart thumping. All through our voyage I had pictured her waking up and needing me: perhaps alarming the hous...

TO anyone who watched unseen, our progress homeward would undoubtedly have presented itself as peculiar. Dr. Firth’s suggestion that the jewels would be more secure in his safe...

I REMEMBER a dream of pain that seemed to last for years: a dream in which lights flashed back and forth perpetually behind my eyes, and all the time there was a buzz of low voi...