Upsidonia

"I played bridge," I said, "and lost--I mean won--two hundred and thirty-four pounds. I have accepted a U. O. Me for it. What do you do if you haven't got the money?"

My observation as to the behaviour and appearance of the well-dressed people was confirmed. The men slouched along with their hands in their pockets, and the women, although the...

It was at this point that Lord Potter came upon the scene. He had, I believe, refused Mrs. Claudie's invitation, but whether he could not bear to be left out of any important so...

I had been walking for many days, carrying my pack, enjoying myself hugely and spending next to nothing. I had got into a wild hilly country, where habitation was very sparse, a...

There were basket chairs on the verandah, and I took the most comfortable of them, after Miriam had chosen hers, which I should have said was the least comfortable of all.

By and by we came to a tramway terminus, where an electric car was standing. The policeman, who had been walking by the side of the carriage, the ragged man, and many of our oth...

The Earl of Blueberry was, as I have said, a suburban postman, and as it was his month for making an evening round he was not present at Lady Blueberry's tea-party. And their on...

On the last evening but one, before Miriam and I were to go away together, we were sitting round the tea-table in the verandah. Mrs. Eppstein was with us, and Mr. Perry had said...

He greeted me affably, for we were now very good friends. I had taught him to bowl "googlies," which were unknown in Upsidonian cricket before my arrival, and he had got into th...

An unpleasant surprise awaited me. I was informed by Mr. Blother, who came in answer to my ring at the bell, while I waited by the open door,[33] that Lord Potter had called whi...

But I found him quite unable to discuss anything but the startling and courageous behaviour of his friend, Mr. Bolster. He was going to his house at once, and I said that I woul...

We sat down to dinner that evening without Edward, but nobody expressed any anxiety about him, as his philanthropic enterprises often detached him from the family circle. I said...

A day or two after Miriam had first invited me into her garden the invitation was made public in the fashionable intelligence of the Culbut newspapers, and she and I were the re...

The card-room was well occupied. We cut into a table with two other men, one of whom was the stockbroker who had made the lucky _coup_ that afternoon, and the other was a disagr...

It was quite time for me to go and get ready to join Mr. Perry. Indeed, it was more than time, as I found when I went upstairs, and was greeted by Lord Arthur with the remark th...

"What an awful thing to say! I am afraid you are a very wicked man, but, of course, you don't mean it. Miriam is rather tired of talking to you, and asked me to come and take he...

They seemed to keep early hours in Upsidonia.[1] A cup of tea was brought to me at half-past seven, and I was told that I must breakfast not later than a quarter-past eight, for...

I am not going to describe Miriam's garden. I will only say that of all the gardens I have ever seen, large or small, it remains in my memory as the quietest, the most retired a...

My last day in Upsidonia had arrived, and the time was fast approaching when I was about to rob that country of its brightest jewel. Towards the evening, feeling restless, I set...

"Our family," said young Perry, "has held a good position in Culbut for many generations. My great-grandfather is said to have come here as a boy with ten thousand pounds in his...

We had long since left the business streets of the city behind, and had come, first through a district of mean-looking houses occupied chiefly, as Perry told me, by the aristocr...

As we walked away, Edward said contemptuously: "Isn't that just like the race of servants all over? To come back for their _things_! Despicable race of parasitical humbugs! If I...

As long as I remained in Miriam's garden, I was safe from interruption. If the police had been waiting to arrest me for a crime, they could not have got at me, or even summoned...

The cigars provided for me, if not of the exact brand as those smoked by Mr. Perry, were very good, and I had been enjoying one of them for some little time when I heard the out...

It is not customary, at least in England, to undertake the responsibilities of married life without a probability of being able to carry them out, and at the time I had come int...

"I have great hopes of him," he said. "The poor hate him, because they say he is trying to foist property on to them by removing their taxes one after the other, and piling them...

Two days after Edward's conviction, when we were all getting a little accustomed to his loss, Miriam and I had spent an hour of the afternoon in her garden, laying plans for our...

"My dear," I said, when Miriam and I had once more sought the seclusion of her garden, and she had asked me what it all meant, "you don't understand English ways yet. It is not...

It was about a week after I had been welcomed into the Perry family that we were all asked to take high tea at the house of Mrs. Perry's sister, the Countess of Blueberry.

The parade of the newly formed Masters' and Mistresses' Union duly took place, and was attended by no immediately unpleasant results as far as Edward or the other leaders were c...

I woke up the next morning without that sense of something delightful about to happen to me to which I had grown accustomed since my arrival in Upsidonia, but soon brightened ag...

The luncheon to which we presently sat down was everything that it should have been from my point of view. It is true that Mrs. Perry had thoughtfully provided some large hunks...

so, but an agitation had been made by the mothers of the poor children who played there some years before, and the Municipality had legislated in their favour. Edward Perry cons...