Elizabeth Bowen by Elizabeth Bowen

Author:Elizabeth Bowen [Bowen, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Short stories
Publisher: Hearst Magazines UK
Published: 2013-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

West Wallows was more than a village: it was a neighbourhood. From the wide street branched roads that led past the white gates of many homes. The rector was tactful and energetic, the squire unusually cultivated; there were a number of moderate-sized dwellings - some antique, some quite recently built. Inexpensive sociability, liberal politics, shapely antique family furniture, ‘interests’, enlightened charity set the note of the place. No one was very rich; nobody was eccentric, and though few people hunted, nobody wrote letters against blood sports. The local families harmonised with the pleasant retired people who had settled here. Probably few neighbourhoods in England have such a nice atmosphere as West Wallows. In the holidays all the children had a jolly time…The Easter holidays were in progress now, and this created a slight predicament: how much should Hermione be with other children?

The Misses Evers decided to wait and see.

They decided to wait for grace and see what line things took. They hinted at nothing to anyone. In the week before Hermione came, the tortoiseshell cat Barbara was persuaded to wean her two patchy kittens, who learnt to lap prettily from an Umbrian saucer. The honeysuckle up the south front of the cottage unfolded the last of its green shoots, and in the garden and in the strip of orchard the other side of the brook daffodils blew their trumpets.

The first afternoon was windy. Every time a sucker of honeysuckle swung loose and tapped the window Hermione jumped. This was the only sign she gave of having grown-up nerves. She was not quite a pretty child; her face was a long, plump oval; her large dark-grey eyes were set rather close together, which gave her an urgent air. Her naturally curly dark hair had grown too long for a bob and swung just clear of her shoulders. She sat in the dark glass dome of her own inside world, just too composedly eating bread and honey. Now and then she glanced, with mysterious satisfaction, at the bangles on one or the other of her wrists.

‘This is honey from our own bees. Hermione.’

‘Goodness.’

‘It tastes quite different from other honey, we think.’

‘Yes; Mummy said you kept bees. Do you keep doves too?’

Eunice glanced at the white forms that whirled rather frighteningly over the wind-teased garden. ‘Those are the next-door pigeons; they keep on flying over, so we have the fun of them.’

‘The next-door cat in London keeps getting into our larder. I do hate cats.’

‘Oh, but you must like Barbara - and she’s got two kittens.’

‘Cats always do that, don’t they?’

After tea Eunice took her up to what was to be her room, the spare-room over the porch, snug as a ship’s cabin and frilly with sprigged stuff. She showed her the sampler worked by another little girl of eleven, just a hundred years ago, and some framed photographs of Italy. ‘That’s Assisi, where St Francis lived.’

‘Goodness,’ said Hermione, biting her thumb vaguely. She looked through the loops of dotted muslin curtain at the tops of the apple trees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.