George was in a fidget, in the little sitting room that opened off the
hall. It was just under the stairs and when any one went up or down he
could hear the feet and couldn’t help pausing to identify them by the
sound. It was astonishing how many footsteps passed along those stairs:
and if they ceased for a while it was no better, for he found himself
subconsciously waiting for the next and wondering whose they would be.
He had laid out his maps and papers and the portable typewriter, all
ready to begin work: the draft of his booklet on Summer Tranquillity
(for the Eastern Railroad) would soon be due.
His mind was too agitated to compose, but he began clattering a
little on the machine, at random, just to give the impression that he
was working. Why should any one invent a ‘noiseless’ typewriter, he
wondered? The charm of a typewriter was that it _did_ make a noise,
a noise that shut out the racket other people were making. What a
senseless idea, to imagine that he could really get some work done
here, buried in the country. He could not concentrate because there
was nothing to concentrate _from_. There was only the huge vacancy of
golden summer, droning pine trees, yawning beaches, the barren pagan
earth under a crypt of air. The world shimmered like a pale jewel with
a flame of uneasiness at its core. The place to write about Summer
Tranquillity would have been that hot secret little office of his in
town, where the one window opened like a furnace door into a white
blaze of sunshine, where perspiration dripped from his nose on the
typewriter keys, but where he had the supreme sensation of intangible
solitude.
What on earth were they walking about for, upstairs? Was she showing
the man the whole house? He looked distractedly across the garden. The
listless beaming of the summer noon lay drowsy upon the lawn, filling
him with an appalling sense of his absurd futility. As Phyllis had so
often said, he was neither business man nor artist. What the devil was
he working for, what goal was there, what fine flamboyant achievement
was possible? He had a feeling of being alone against the world, a poor
human clown wrestling with grotesque obsessions; and no longer really
young.
He leaned toward the glass-paned bookcase, tilting his head anxiously
to see the reflection of the top ... certainly it was receding in a
V above each temple--but that made the forehead seem higher. He had
always believed that, among advertising men, he looked rather more
intellectual ... he turned again to the window, a little ashamed of his
agitations. Beyond the glass veranda he caught the stolid gaze of the
cook at the pantry window. He averted his head quickly: ridiculous that
you can’t do anything without catching someone’s eye. All this was just
insanity. He took up the page he was working on and rolled it into the
typewriter. Page 38 ... like himself, thirty-eight, and forty only two
pages away. I suppose that at forty a man feels just as young as ever,
but ... it’s absurd to feel as young as I do, at thirty-eight.... Well,
I must keep my mind clear (he thought, rather pathetically)--it’s the
only capital we have.
Phyllis’s footsteps were coming downstairs. He was always worried when
he heard them like that: slow and light, pausing every few treads. That
meant she was thinking about something, and in a minute there would be
a new problem for him to consider. When he heard them like that he
usually rushed into the hall, demanding hotly, “Well, what is it _now_?”
“What is what?”
“You know I can’t work when you come downstairs like that.”
“Like _what_?”
“As though you were worrying.”
“Well, why didn’t you take a house where I could slide down the
banisters?”
This time the feet came down so slowly he felt sure she _wanted_ him
to rush out. The rushing out always put him in the wrong. Well, he
just wouldn’t. He would stay where he was, that would show her he
was indignant. He took out page 38, put in a blank sheet and rattled
the keys vigorously. But he felt cheated of a sensation. He always
enjoyed bursting out, through the door at the foot of the stairs, and
catching her transfixed on the landing, with the big windows behind
her--half frightened, half angry. He would not have told her so, but it
was partly because she was so pretty there: the outline of her comely
defiant head against the light, her smooth arm emerging from the dainty
sleeve that caught and held a pearly brightness. How lovely she is, he
thought; it’s gruesome for her to be so pretty and talk such nonsense
... she needs someone to pump her full of indigestible compliments,
that would silence her----
She was at the telephone. He could hear her talking to the grocer. “I’m
sorry, Mr. Cotswold, is it too late to catch the driver? I’ve got some
unexpected guests....”
He hastened into the hall. “Don’t forget the sardines,” he shouted.
She looked at him calmly with the instrument at her mouth. She seemed
surprisingly tranquil.
“Never mind, then, thank you,” she said to Mr. Cotswold, in the
particularly cordial and gracious voice which (George felt) was meant
to emphasize the coolness with which she would now speak to him.
“If you want sardines you’ll have to go down and get them yourself. The
driver’s left.”
She went into the sitting room and automatically pulled the blind
halfway down. He followed her and raised it to the top of the window
again. She sat on the couch, and he was surprised to see a dangerous
merriment in her face.
“I suppose you think you can shut yourself in here and just let the
house run itself,” she said. “Like a sardine.”
“I have to do my work, don’t I?”
She looked at the sheet in the typewriter, on which was written wildly
_Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of this absurd
family_. But she did not comment on it, and George felt that this was
one of her moments of genius. He wondered, in alarm, what she was going
to do with him next. He felt helpless as only a husband can.
“Well, anyhow, they pack sardines in oil, not in vinegar,” he said
angrily. This sounded so silly it made him angrier still. He closed
the door and cried in a fierce undertone, “What’s the idea, this man
Martin? Who is he? Is he staying for lunch?”
“He’s an artist. I thought you liked artists.”
“Yes, but we don’t have to fill the house with ’em.”
“I’ve put him in the spare room.”
“In the spare room! What about Miss Clyde?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. He seemed to expect it, somehow. He’s a
very irresistible person.”
“I guess I can resist him. If we’ve got to have him in the house we can
put him in here, on the couch.”
“It’s too late. He’s in the spare room now, washing his hands.--You
needn’t have been so rude when I brought him in.”
“I didn’t like his looks,” George mumbled.
This wasn’t true. George _had_ liked his looks, but he had resented (as
must every man burdened with many perplexities) that gay and careless
air. He looks as if he didn’t have a thing on earth to worry about,
George thought. And he comes floating in here, with casual ease, among
the thousand interlocking tensions of George’s difficulties, to gaze
with untroubled eye on his host’s restless alertness. Or was this some
sort of joke that Phyllis was putting over on him?
“I’m going to put the two older children on the sleeping porch, so Ben
and Ruth can have their room. Miss Clyde will have to go on this couch.”
“How about me?”
“Well, we can sleep together I suppose. It won’t kill us, for a few
nights.”
Not if I know it, George thought. That old walnut bedstead, with the
deep valley in the middle, so that we both keep rolling against one
another. Unless you clutch the post and lie on a slope all night.
Besides, Phyl is so changeable in temperature. When she goes to bed
she’s chilly and wants to kindle her feet against you. Then by and
by she gets warmed up and it’s like sleeping with a hot bottle five
feet long. On a night in July, too. Whenever I get comfortable, she
wants to turn over on the other side; that brings us face to face.
Impossible! How unexpected life is. If any one had told me, twelve
years ago, that it would be so irritating to sleep in the same bed
with a pretty woman, I wouldn’t have believed it. Phyl doesn’t like it
either, yet she was annoyed by that booklet I wrote for the Edwards
Furniture Company on The Joys of the Separate Bed. I’ll sleep on the
window seat in the upstairs hall. No: that won’t do, if Miss Clyde is
in the den she’ll have to be coming upstairs to the bathroom and Phyl
won’t like me spread out there in public. It’s funny: sleeping is the
most harmless thing people ever do, why are they so furtive about it?
But George rather liked the idea of Miss Clyde on his couch. It seemed,
somehow, to add piquancy to a dull situation. To conceal this private
notion, he argued against it.
“Miss Clyde will be a long way from the bathroom,” he said.
“There’s no other place to put her. You’re always talking about
artists, their fine easy ways, I guess she won’t mind if someone sees
her in a wrapper.”
She’d look charming in a wrapper, George thought. The queer little
boyish thing! I can just imagine her. It would be blue, a kind of filmy
blue crêpe. Coming up the stairs the morning sunlight would catch her,
through those big windows: her small curves delicately outlined in a
haze of soft colour, her hair tousled, a flash of white ankle as she
reached the top step. He would sit up on the window seat, as though
just drowsily awakened. Oh ... good-morning! Good-morning. What a
picture you would make. Silhouette Before Breakfast. Life is full of
so many heavenly pictures.... The bay window above the garden would be
calm and airy in the before-breakfast freshness of July; the house just
beginning that dreamy stir that precedes the affairs of day. She would
come across to him ... he had hardly dared admit, even to himself, how
far they had gone in imagination....
“I’m damned if I want strange women careering all over the house in
their wrappers,” he said with well-simulated peevishness.
“Bosh!” exclaimed Phyllis. “There’s nothing you’d like better. Unless
without their wrappers.”
“What’s the use of being vulgar?” he said. He thought: How gorgeous
Phyllis is. You can’t fool her.
Poor old George, thought Phyllis. I believe he imagines that he’s
attractive to women. But I won’t say that to him, he’s in such a stew
already.
“Miss Clyde is one of the most truly refined people I ever met.”
This didn’t quite succeed. Phyllis was always annoyed when George
attempted to bunco her. He was so transparent.
“I believe you imagine you’re attractive to women,” she said.
“Hell,” he said, “I don’t even take time to think about it.”
“If that were true, you’d be much more so.”
If I’d finished this cursed booklet, he thought, I’d take a little time
off and _be_ attractive to women, just to surprise her. Why, damnation,
I could even make Phyl fall in love with me if it was worth taking the
trouble. The way to please women is to show them that you know they’re
not happy. And that their special kind of unhappiness is a particularly
subtle and lonely one, but curable by sympathy. But it’s better not
to think about these things at all. It’s queer to think of all the
people in the world, and how troubled they are when they look each
other straight in the eyes. If I knew why that is, I’d know everything.
The devil of it is, women have begun to think. That’s why everything
is so uneasy. Why even Phyllis has begun to think. I mustn’t let her,
because she’s too fond of being comfortable. It’ll only upset her. She
_must_ be kept amused. That’s the beauty of money, it’s a substitute
for thinking. It can surround you with delightful distractions. It’s
like women, too: it comes to the fellows who know how to entertain it.
I must learn how to be attractive to money.
“Certainly, Phyl, no one can say that _you’re_ attractive to women.
You’re too pretty.” He leaned over and kissed the end of her nose.
There, perhaps that would calm her, he might still be able to do
half an hour’s writing before the children came back from the beach.
That was the only solution. Simplify, simplify life by burying
yourself in some work of imagination--such as the Eastern Railway
booklet. He smiled bitterly. Those were the only happy people, the
artists--immersed in dreams like frogs in a pond, only their eyes
bulging just above the surface. But how are you going to attain that
blissful absorption? Dominate the ragings of biology by writing
railroad folders? The whole universe turns contrary, he thought, to
the one who wants to create. Time is against him, carnal distraction,
the natural indolence of man. Yes, even God is against him: God, Who
invented everything and is jealous of other creators. If Phyllis hadn’t
been there, he would have fallen on his knees by the couch and told God
what he thought of Him.
They heard someone coming downstairs. Phyllis rose.
“Come in, Mr. Martin! See the nice little den where George does his
work.”
V
George is carving the meat. He always feels better at meal times. The
trouble with me, he thinks, is that I take things too seriously. I dare
say I haven’t any sense of humour. Let’s see if we can’t make a sort of
fresh start from this moment.
The three little girls are brown and gay. Phyllis looks tired, but
busily exhibits that staccato sprightliness that comes over her when
there are guests. This Mr. Martin seems a silent fellow. The children
stare at him, and seem to have some joke among themselves; Sylvia and
Rose nudge each other and giggle. I always think it’s a mistake to let
the two younger ones sit side by side. But Mr. Martin seems unaware of
them: his eyes are fixed on Phyllis with a cheerful watchfulness. He’s
a solemn bird, thinks George, but he has the good taste to admire Phyl.
I hope he won’t overdo it, for her sake. She can’t stand much admiring:
it goes to her head right away.
“Well,” Phyllis says, “this is really delightful. A distinguished guest
is just what we needed to make the Picnic a success. Children, don’t
kick the legs of the table.--Mr. Granville is so fond of artists, he
employs such a lot of them in his business. Of course, I dare say your
kind of work is quite different, but there must be a lot of painters
who wouldn’t know what to do if it weren’t for the little advertising
jobs that come along. We’re so happy to be in the country again. Of
course we live very simply, but Mr. Granville can always work so well
when he gets away from the office. I feel so sorry for the men who have
to be in town all summer.”
George feels a violent impulse to contradict her, but masters it. Phyl,
he says, ask Lizzie to bring a spoon for the gravy. She always forgets
it.--Mr. Martin, I’ll tell you the kind of people we are, we never have
a carving knife sharp enough to cut with.
“Well, George, it’s not our own carving knife. You see, Mr. Martin, we
took this house furnished. It’s not like having our own things.”
Our own isn’t any better, George’s voice shouts angrily inside his
head, but he manages to keep it from coming out.
Are we going to the Haunted House for the Picnic? the children ask.
Not unless you take your elbows off the table, Phyllis says sharply.
Mr. Martin, who looks puzzled, takes his elbows off too.
There’s a poor old tumbledown farm, on a sandy cliff, among dark pine
trees, Phyllis explains. Someone has told the children that it’s
haunted. The word means nothing to them, but they can tell--by the way
people say it--that it suggests something interesting.
Yes, if it doesn’t rain, George says. He is too experienced a parent
ever to make positive promises.
This would have been a good day for cold meat and salad, he thinks,
sawing away at the joggling-slippery roast. Phyllis sees him thinking
it. “I’m sorry to have hot meat on such a warm day, but we’ll need it
to-morrow for the sandwiches. There’s some iced tea coming.”
“Hot meat to make your inside hot, iced tea to make it cold,” the
children exclaim. “Do we have to eat the fat?”
They always ask this question. Then Mr. Martin asks it too, which
causes amusement. How delightful Mr. Martin is, Phyllis thinks. He has
a sort of eagerness to be happy, to enjoy things, to move blithely from
one minute to the next. Even George feels it, he looks less cross. But
George, as he takes down a tall glass of iced tea in one draught, is
making calmly desperate resolves. I haven’t the faintest idea what
anything means, he is telling himself, but I’m just going to go on
placidly. I’ll go cracked if I keep on worrying. Maybe after lunch
I can take a snooze in the garden. One of the little girls wriggles
happily on her chair, her pink frock has slipped sideways on her
smooth brown shoulder, showing the frilled strap of her shirt. With
a gentle twitch George pulls her dress straight and pats the child’s
golden nape. She looks at him with innocent affection. That little bare
shoulder makes him think of women and their loveliness, and all the
torments of unease to which these same poor youngsters must grow up. He
concentrates his mind on the blue and white platter, the brown gravy
dimpled with clear circles of fat and turning ruddy as the juice of the
roast trickles down, the amber tea with slices of lemon. Thank Heaven
Time still lies before them all like an ocean. Even he and Phyllis are
young, they don’t need to do anything definite about life, not yet.
Keep your mind on the small beautiful details, the crackling yield of
bread-crust under the knife, the wide hills over the sea, sunset on
open spaces that evaporates all passion, all discontent. He picks up
his napkin from the rug, helps himself to vegetables, and begins to
eat. How delicious life is, even for an abject fool like me, he thinks.
I wonder if any one ever feels old?
“The Picnic is our great annual adventure,” Phyllis was saying. “I
hope you won’t think us too silly, but we _do_ look forward to it
enormously. It’s such fun to forget about things once in a while and
just have a good time.”
“Yes,” said George, “we worry about it for weeks beforehand. And we
always invite more people than the house can properly hold.”
Phyllis flashed a little angry brightness across the table.
“You mustn’t think us too informal if things are a bit crowded, that’s
part of the fun.”
“What is informal?” asked Mr. Martin, quite gravely.
George smiled. Why, the man was kidding her.
“Informal’s what women always say they’re going to be and never are.”
“George loves to lay down the law about women, Mr. Martin. As a matter
of fact he knows nothing about them. I expect you know more than he
does, even if you’re a bachelor.”
“Is there a lot to know?” said Mr. Martin.
The man’s delightful, thought George.
I never felt as queer as this before, thought Phyllis. I feel as
though something astonishing were going to happen. Or worse still, as
though nothing would _ever_ happen. How many sandwiches will we need?
Three children, two of us, Mr. Martin, Ben and Ruth, Miss Clyde--that
makes nine. When this gruesome Picnic is over, perhaps I shall have a
chance to ease up. I feel as though I should like to fall in love with
someone. I wonder if Mr. Martin would do?
“Mr. and Mrs. Brook are coming this evening,” she said gaily. “You’ll
like them, they’re charming.”
“As a matter of fact,” said George (she always knew, when he began with
that phrase, that he was going to contradict her), “they’re the dullest
people on earth; so completely dull that you can’t help envying them.
They’re the perfect mates, too stupid even to disagree with each other.
If every other couple in the world went smash, marriage would still be
justified by Ben and Ruth.”
“How do couples go smash?” asked Janet.
“You finish your beans and don’t talk,” said Phyllis.
She was pleasantly fluttered by the way Mr. Martin looked at her. His
eyes kept returning from his plate: lingering on her face with a gently
inquiring studiousness that was not at all offensive. I believe he
really does want to do a portrait of me, she thought. He’s fixing the
features in his mind. She turned her head toward Sylvia and Rose so
that he would see the half-profile with an appealing madonna softness
upon it. The coloured glass panes behind her, what a vivid background
that would make.--But she felt he was about to ask a question, and
allowed her eyes to come round to meet him, to make it easier for him.
Obviously he was shy.
“Do I have to finish my beans?” he said.
What a difficult question to answer. There must be some joke that she
did not see.
“Beans make bones,” asserted Rose fatuously.
“Why, of course not,” she said hastily. “I was afraid that cocoanut
cake would take away your appetite.” No, that was the wrong thing to
say: she saw George’s face sharpen at the mention of the cake: he was
getting ready to blurt out something and she felt sure it would be
awkward. With the speed of a hunted animal her mind dodged in search of
some remark that would give her time to think.
“I like the English way of serving beans, slicing them lengthwise, you
know; it makes them so tender, without any strings.” There; surely that
would dispose of the absurd topic. “George, what are you going to do
this afternoon? Go for a swim?”
“But these _are_ string beans,” said George. “They’re supposed to have
strings. Perhaps Mr. Martin misses them.”
“If he doesn’t finish his beans, Virginia can have them,” Sylvia
suggested. “She eats vegetables sometimes.”
Virginia was the cat, just now obviously misnamed. Phyllis knew very
well what was coming next, but she could not speak fast enough to avert
it.
“Beans will be good for her,” said Janet with enthusiasm. “She’s going
to have a family very soon, she needs nourishing food.”
“Mother says she mustn’t have a shock, it might be bad for the kittens.”
“That’ll do, never mind about Virginia.”
Lizzie was making grimaces from the kitchen door, holding up a cup
custard and contorting a red face of inquiry. Phyllis nodded. But
perhaps Lizzie means there aren’t enough custards to go round? “Oh,
Lizzie, put on the fruit too.”
George, with his damnable persistence, had not forgotten.
“How about the cake?” he asked.
“George, you know we’ve got to save the cake for the Picnic. I can’t
ask Lizzie to make another one.”
“It’s been cut already,” he said.
I’m _not_ going to be humiliated like this in front of a stranger.
George is just doing it because he sees Mr. Martin admires me. Will
this meal never end? I’m past battling over trifles. Have the cake if
you want it. I don’t care. If Lizzie puts it on, all right. Leave it
to her. I’m not going to order it on. Cooks always take the man’s side
anyhow. I’m afraid Mr. Martin will think we’re lunatics.
“What do you think of a husband that always knows exactly what’s in the
pantry?” she asked him.
A moment later she couldn’t remember what he had said to this. Perhaps
it’s because I’m so absorbed in my own thoughts. The only thing
I really remember his saying was his comical question whether he
need finish his beans. It’s odd, how much he conveys without saying
anything, just by a look.
Lizzie had put on the cake. Phyllis saw at once that there were only
six custards. She could tell, by the way Lizzie planked them down,
there were no more in the kitchen. If they all took one there wouldn’t
be any for Lizzie herself, and that would mean bad temper. She refused
the custard. She wanted a peach, but felt that the effort of peeling it
was too much. Soft fuzzy skin and wet fingers. Then George, with that
occasional insight that always surprised her, passed her one peeled and
sliced.
“Yes,” he said, “we ought to have a bathe, unless there’s a storm.
Relieve the pressure on the bathroom.”
“Then we’ll all be nice and clean for the Picnic,” exclaimed the
children.
“Miss Clyde is coming,” George continued. “She’s an artist too, perhaps
Mr. Martin knows her.”
“Bring the jug of iced tea in the garden, let’s finish it out there,”
said Phyllis. “It’s stifling here.--Children, you go and get your naps.”
The little table was under the pine trees, the other side of the
croquet oval. The grove smelt warm and slippery. Now there are the long
hours of the afternoon to be lived through, somehow. George sprawled
himself on the brown needles, the smoke of his pipe drifted past her in
a blue whiff. Mr. Martin put a chair for her.
“I love these pine trees,” she said. “They’re always whispering.”
“It isn’t polite to whisper.”
She smiled at him. He does say the quaintest things.
“Nature never is polite. On an afternoon like this the whole world
seems to yawn in your face.”
“These trees smell like cough drops.” This was George.
An artist’s mind is always on the beautiful, Phyllis thought. She
pulled her skirt down a little, and tried to decide what was the most
beautiful thing visible, so she could call his attention to it. She
wished she hadn’t said that about yawning, she felt one coming on. The
hot lunch had made her frightfully drowsy. Across the bay thunderheads
were massing and rolling up, deep golden purple. “I wish I could
paint,” she said. “See those wonderful----” But she began the sentence
too late; the yawn overtook her in the middle of it.
“Wonderful what?” asked George, looking up. She was struggling with the
desire to gape; she trembled with the violence of her effort. George
stared.
“Are you ill?”
“Wonderful clouds,” she finished savagely. George watched her, adding
one more tally to his private conviction that women are mostly mad.
“If you poured heavy cream into a glass of grape juice,” he said, “it
would look just like that. Coiling round and clotting.”
Sickening idea, Phyllis thought.
“I know exactly what’s going to happen, just about the time I have to
drive over----”
He was going to say it, she felt it coming. He was going to say _depot_
instead of _station_. George always said _depot_ when they were in
the country, and she couldn’t bear it. It was coming, it was coming;
everything was predestined; all her life she had known this scene was
on the way, sitting under the hot croup-kettle smell of the pine trees,
blue thunder piling up on the skyline, poor adorable George mumbling
away, and Mr. Martin watching them with his air of faint surprise. It
was like the beginning of some terrible poem. Everything in life was a
symbol of everything else. The slices of lemon lying at the bottom of
the iced-tea jug, on a soft cloud of undissolved sugar, even they were
a symbol of something....
“George!” she interrupted desperately. “I had the most terrible
premonition. I felt that you were going to say _depot_.”
“Why, yes, I was going to say, just about the time I’m ready to drive
over----”
For his own sake, for her sake, for Mr. Martin’s sake, George must be
prevented. If he used that word, she would know that all this was
foreordained, beyond help and hope. With a quick movement she pushed
her glass of tea off the table; it cascaded onto George’s ankle. He
paused in surprise.
“I’m _so_ sorry. How careless of me, your nice white socks, look out,
that little piece of ice is going down inside your shoe.”
She felt that the guest’s eyes were upon her. He must have seen her do
it. “Is that why they call it a tumbler?” he said.
“Never mind,” said George cheerfully. “It feels fine. I wish it was
down my neck.”
For a moment transparent Time swung in a warm, dull, uncertain
equilibrium. Phyllis could see Lizzie jolt heavily down the kitchen
steps and bend over the garbage can. The grinding clang of the lid came
like a threatening clap of cymbals. How glorious it would be if she
and Lizzie, each with a garbage can and lid, could suddenly break into
a ritual dance on the lawn, posturing under the maddening sunlight,
clashing away their fury in a supreme dervish protest. How surprised
George and Mr. Martin would be. She and Lizzie making frantic and
mocking gestures, sweating the comedy out of their veins, breaking
through the dull mask of polite behaviour into the great rhythms and
furies of life. No longer to be tired out by little things, but to
be exhausted and used by some great ecstasy. She was watching every
movement life made, and thinking, as it was finished, There, that’s
over, it never can happen again. But it all _would_ happen again, and
how weary she was of keeping to herself her heavy burden of secret
desires and pangs. Why couldn’t she tell George? But if you tried to
tell George things, he went far, far away--because, probably, he too
had so much that he yearned to tell. You can’t really be intimate with
people who know you so well. Yet she had never been so fond of him.
Here, in this garden, they seemed for an instant secure from the terror
of the world. Behind these walls, these burning roses, disorderly
forces could not reach them.
Mr. Martin was a comforting sort of guest, he did not talk but just
looked happy and was spooning up the sugar from the bottom of his
glass. Drink life to the bottom of the vessel, you always find some
sugar there, all the more palatable for the lemony taste.
A clear compulsory ringing trilled keenly across the lawn. They
listened, unwilling to move.
Then there was the squeak of the screen being lifted in the pantry
window. Lizzie put out her head and called. Phyllis found it
impossible to stir.
“George, you go. Then you can put on some dry socks.”
“Nonsense,” he said, getting up. “I’ll be lots wetter than that if the
storm breaks while I’m driving to the depot.”