A Holiday in Bed by J. M. Barrie

Author:J. M. Barrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781620128459
Publisher: Duke Classics

My Favorite Authoress

*

Just out of the four-mile radius—to give the cabby his chance—is a sleepy lane, lent by the country to the town, and we have only to open a little gate off it to find ourselves in an old-fashioned garden. The house, with its many quaint windows, across which evergreens spread their open fingers as a child makes believe to shroud his eyes, has a literary look—at least, so it seems to me, but perhaps this is because I know the authoress who is at this moment advancing down the walk to meet me.

She has hastily laid aside her hoop, and crosses the grass with the dignity that becomes a woman of letters. Her hair falls over her forehead in an attractive way, and she is just the proper height for an authoress. The face, so open that one can watch the process of thinking out a new novel in it, from start to finish, is at times a little careworn, as if it found the world weighty, but at present there is a gracious smile on it, and she greets me heartily with one hand, while the other strays to her neck, to make sure that her lace collar is lying nicely. It would be idle to pretend that she is much more than eight years old, "but then Maurice is only six."

Like most literary people who put their friends into books, she is very modest, and it never seems to strike her that I would come all this way to see her.

"Mamma is out," she says simply, "but she will be back soon; and papa is at a meeting, but he will be back soon, too."

I know what meeting her papa is at. He is crazed with admiration for Stanley, and can speak of nothing but the Emin Relief Expedition. While he is away proposing that Stanley should get the freedom of Hampstead, now is my opportunity to interview the authoress.

"Won't you come into the house?"

I accompany the authoress to the house, while we chat pleasantly on literary topics.

"Oh, there is Maurice, silly boy!"

Maurice is too busy shooting arrows into the next garden to pay much attention to me; and the authoress smiles at him good-naturedly.

"I hope you'll stay to dinner," he says to me, "because then we'll have two kinds of pudding."

The authoress and I give each other a look which means that children will be children, and then we go indoors.

"Are you not going to play any more?" cries Maurice to the authoress.

She blushes a little.

"I was playing with him," she explains, "to keep him out of mischief till mamma comes back."

In the drawing-room we talk for a time of ordinary matters—of the allowances one must make for a child like Maurice, for instance—and gradually we drift to the subject of literature. I know literary people sufficiently well to be aware that they will talk freely—almost too freely—of their work if approached in the proper spirit.

"Are you busy just now?" I ask, with assumed carelessness, and as if I had not been preparing the question since I heard papa was out.

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.