The unlit lamp

THE dining-room at Leaside was also Colonel Ogden's study. It contained, in addition to the mahogany sideboard with ornamental brackets at the back, the three-tier dumb waiter a...

SEABOURNE-ON-SEA was small and select. The Ogdens' house in Seabourne was small but not particularly select, for it had once been let out in apartments. The landlord now accepte...

THE schoolroom at Leaside was dreary. You came through the front door into a narrow passage covered with brown linoleum and decorated with trophies from Indian bazaars. On one s...

THE five months between March and August passed uneventfully, as they always did at Seabourne. Joan was a little taller, Milly a little fatter, Mrs. Ogden a little more nervous...

"You must come and see my cream mice, dozens of them----" he began. But at that moment Elizabeth and her brother were announced and Joan hurried to meet them. She examined Mr. R...

ELIZABETH sat alone in her brother's study. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling; Ralph's books and some of her own that she had brought with her from Cambridge.

IT was a blazing July, nearly a year later. Seabourne, finding at first a new topic for conversation in the heat wave, very soon wearied of this rare phenomenon, abandoning itse...

A NEW family had come to Conway House under Cone Head. The place had stood vacant for years; now, at length, it was sold, and Elizabeth knew who the new people were. When Elizab...

THE windows of Conway House glowed, and the winter twilight was creeping in and out among the elms in the avenue. The air was cold and dry, the clanking of the skates that Joan...

One morning in July he had woken up with a headache and a cough; bronchitis followed, and the strain on his already flagging heart made the doctor uneasy. Undoubtedly Colonel Og...

THE weeks dragged on; Colonel Ogden might recover, but his illness would of necessity be a long one, for his heart, already weak, was now disposed to stop beating on the least p...

Every morning now when it was fine he went out in a bath chair, dragged by a very old man. The dreadful bend of the old man's shoulders as he tugged weakly with his hands behind...

RICHARD BENSON came home towards the end of August after a visit to friends in Ireland. To Elizabeth's disappointment, Joan showed no pleasure at his return. However, it appeare...

IT is strange in this world, how events of momentous importance happen without any warning, and do not, as is commonly stated, "Cast their shadows before." Moreover, they reach...

AFTER all, the novelty of the situation wore off very quickly. In a few weeks' time the children had got quite accustomed to the thought of a future hundred and fifty a year; it...

SURELY the last place in the world where anyone would have expected to meet a tragedy was in the High Street of Seabourne. There never was a street so genteel and so lacking in...

MRS. OGDEN had been waiting at the dining-room window and ran to open the front door as Joan came down the street. The girl looked worn out and dispirited; she walked slowly and...

THE usual time elapsed and then Joan knew she had passed her examination with honours. There was a grudging pride in Mrs. Ogden's heart in spite of herself, and even the colonel...

IN the two years that elapsed before Joan's seventeenth birthday nothing occurred in the nature of a change. Looking back over that time she was surprised to find how little had...

DURING the weeks that followed, Joan managed to visit the Bensons on every available opportunity, or so it seemed to her mother. Mrs. Benson, lavish in invitations, encouraged t...

RICHARD was faithful to his promise. Large brown paper parcels of books began to arrive from Cambridge; Joan and Elizabeth studied them together. The weariness of the days was g...

JOAN took two letters from her jacket pocket; one was from Elizabeth, the other from her mother. Aunt Ann had come to the rescue in the end, and Joan and Milly had been sent to...

MRS. OGDEN wrote yet again: "I brought your father home yesterday; the doctor thought he would be better in his own house. God knows if the cure has helped him at all, I do not...

THEY buried him in the prim cemetery which had somehow taken upon itself the likeness of Seabourne, holding as it did so many of the late occupants of Seabourne's bath chairs an...

THE two years that elapsed after Colonel Ogden's death were years of monotonous uncertainty. There was no charm about this uncertainty, no spirit of possible high adventure rais...

"To think," Mrs. Ogden burst out suddenly, "to think that a daughter of mine could stoop to a vulgar intrigue with a common young man in a shop! Could--oh! I simply can't bring...

ON Joan's twenty-first birthday it poured with rain. She woke early, conscious of a sound that she could not place for a moment, the sound of a gutter overflowing on to the lead...

She put the joint in the oven and, turning to the sink, began peeling potatoes; then she rinsed them and put them to boil. The breakfast things were waiting to be washed up; an...

THE winter dragged on into spring, a late spring, but wonderfully rewarding when it came. Everything connected with the earth seemed to burst out into fulfilment all in a night;...

IT was extraordinary how Elizabeth's return changed the complexion of things for Joan; strange that one human being, not really beautiful, only a little more than average clever...

THE tiny study at Alexandra House was bright with flowers, although it was November. The flowers had been the gift of one of Harriet Nelson's youthful admirers, Rosie Wilmot, an...

THE transition from Seabourne to London had been accomplished so quietly and easily that the first morning Joan woke up on the divan in the sitting-room of Elizabeth's flat she...

THAT Christmas Mrs. Benson invited them to dinner, and, being cookless, Mrs. Ogden accepted. Milly was delighted to escape from the dreaded ordeal of Christmas dinner at home. H...

IN the following February Milly was sent home They wrote from Alexandra House to say that for the present, at all events, she was too ill to continue her studies. She had had a...

TWO weeks elapsed before Mrs. Ogden would consent to any further examination of Milly's lungs. At first she refused on the ground that Milly was only in need of rest, and when J...

MILLY'S illness was discussed at every tea-table in Seabourne, and proved a grateful topic in the stiff little club as well. If the Ogdens did nothing else, they certainly provi...

THAT August Joan's worst fears were justified, for Milly began to spit blood. Trying to play her violin one morning she was overtaken by a fit of coughing; she pressed her handk...

MILLY'S death had aged Mrs. Ogden; she did not speak of it on every occasion as she had of her widowhood, but seemed rather to shrink from any mention of the subject, even by Jo...

ELIZABETH'S attitude towards the new decision to leave Seabourne made Joan uneasy. Elizabeth said nothing at all, merely nodding her head. Joan thought that she was worried and...

IT had come. Joan lay awake and realized that this was her last night in Seabourne. She got up and lit the gas. Her eyes roved round the familiar bedroom; there was Milly's bed-...

THE new town band played every Thursday afternoon in the new skating-rink in the High Street. The band was not really new and neither was the skating-rink, both having come into...

THE poor of Seabourne were really non-existent; but since certain types of religiously-minded people are not happy unless they find some class beneath them on whom to lavish unw...

THE Ogdens took their annual holiday in May, in order to avoid the high prices of the summer season. For a full month prior to their departure, a feeling of unrest always posses...

JOAN stared into her half-packed trunk with a worried expression. If only she could know what the weather would be! Should she take her flannel coat and skirt? Should she take a...

AT the end of the pleasant hotel dining-room sat a big, florid man, alone at a table. His reddish hair was sprinkled with grey and so were the small side-whiskers he affected. H...

THE next morning Joan awoke with a feeling of excitement; the moment she opened her eyes she knew that something unusual had happened. She got up and dressed, more carefully tha...

He planned endless walks and motor drives, excursions to all parts of the country. There were many of these in which Mrs. Ogden could not join, and a situation arose not unlike...

THAT winter Mrs. Ogden's prophecy came true, and influenza laid hold of Seabourne with unexpected virulence. Mrs. Ogden was almost the first victim. She was very ill indeed. Joa...

JOAN sat alone in the dismantled drawing-room. All around her lay the wreckage and driftwood of years. The drawers of her mother's bureau stood open and in disorder; an incredib...

A large gate painted and grained, with "The Pines" in bold black lettering across it. She pushed it open and walked up the drive. Speckled laurels and rhododendrons, now damp an...