The Greatest Works of E. F. Benson (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
tram, had a "golf-stick", as Miss Mapp so foolishly called it, with him, and a golf-ball, and after making a dreadful hole in her lawn, she had hit the ball so hard that it rebounded from the brick-wall, which was quite a long way off, and came back to her very feet, as if asking to be hit again by the golf-stick — no, golf club. She learned to keep her wonderfully observant eye on the ball and bought one of her own. The Major lent her a mashie — and before anyone would have thought it possible, she had learned to propel her ball right over the bed where the snowdrops grew, without beheading any of them in its passage. It was the turn of the wrist that did that, and Withers cleaned the dear little mashie afterwards, and put it safely in the corner of the garden-room.
Today was to be epoch-making. They were to go out to the real links by the 11.20 tram (consecrated by so many memories), and he was to call for her at eleven. He had quai-haied for porridge fully an hour ago.
After letting out the tortoiseshell butterfly from the window looking into the garden, she moved across to the post of observation on the street, and arranged snowdrops in to a little glass vase. There were a few over when that was full, and she saw that a reel of cotton was close at hand, in case she had an idea of what to do with the remainder. Eleven o'clock chimed from the church, and on the stroke she saw him coming up the few yards of street that separated his door from hers. So punctual! So manly!
Diva was careering about the High Street as they walked along it, and Miss Mapp kissed her hand to her.
"Off to play golf, darling," she said. "Is that not grand? Au reservoir."
Diva had not missed seeing the snowdrops in the Major's button-hole, and stood stupefied for a moment at this news. Then she caught sight of Evie, and shot across the street to communicate her suspicions. Quaint Irene joined them and the Padre.
"Snowdrops, i'fegs!" said he . . .
Lucia in London
Chapter One
CONSIDERING THAT PHILIP LUCAS'S AUNT who died early in April was no less than eighty-three years old, and had spent the last seven of them bedridden in a private lunatic asylum, it had been generally and perhaps reasonably hoped among his friends and those of his wife that the bereavement would not be regarded by either of them as an intolerable tragedy. Mrs Quantock, in fact, who, like everybody else at Riseholme, had sent a neat little note of condolence to Mrs Lucas, had, without using the actual words "happy release," certainly implied it or its close equivalent.
She was hoping that there would be a reply to it, for though she had said in her note that her dear Lucia mustn't dream of answering it, that was a mere figure of speech, and she had instructed her parlour-maid who took it across to The Hurst immediately after lunch to say that she didn't know if there was an answer, and would wait to see, for Mrs Lucas might perhaps give a little hint ever so vaguely about what the expectations were concerning which everybody was dying to get information . . .
While she waited for this, Daisy Quantock was busy, like everybody else in the village on this beautiful afternoon of spring, with her garden, hacking about with a small but destructive fork in her flower-beds. She was a gardener of the ruthless type, and went for any small green thing that incautiously showed a timid spike above the earth, suspecting it of being a weed. She had had a slight difference with the professional gardener who had hitherto worked for her on three afternoons during the week, and had told him that his services were no longer required. She meant to do her gardening herself this year, and was confident that a profusion of beautiful flowers and a plethora of delicious vegetables would be the result. At the end of her garden path was a barrow of rich manure, which she proposed, when she had finished the slaughter of the innocents, to dig into the depopulated beds. On the other side of her paling her neighbour Georgie Pillson was rolling his strip of lawn, on which during the summer he often played croquet on a small scale. Occasionally they shouted remarks to each other, but as they got more and more out of breath with their exertions the remarks got fewer. Mrs Quantock's last question had been "What do you do with slugs, Georgie?" and Georgie had panted out, "Pretend you don't see them."
Mrs Quantock had lately grown rather stout owing to a diet of sour milk, which with plenty of sugar was not palatable; but sour milk and pyramids of raw vegetables had quite stopped all the symptoms of consumption which the study of a small but lurid medical manual had induced. Today she had eaten a large but normal lunch in order to test the merits of her new cook, who certainly was a success, for her husband had gobbled up his food with great avidity instead of turning it over and over with his fork as if it was hay. In consequence, stoutness, surfeit, and so much stooping had made her feel rather giddy, and she was standing up to recover, wondering if this giddiness was a symptom of something dire, when de Vere, for such was the incredible name of her parlour-maid, came down the steps from the dining-room with a note in her hand. So Mrs Quantock hastily took off her gardening gloves of stout leather, and opened it.
There was a sentence of formal thanks for her sympathy which Mrs Lucas immensely prized, and then followed these ridiculous words:
It has been a terrible blow to my poor Peppino and myself. We trusted that Auntie Amy might have been spared us for a few years yet.
Ever, dear Daisy, your sad
LUCIA
And not a word about expectations! . . . Lucia's dear Daisy crumpled up the absurd note, and said "Rubbish," so loud that Georgie Pillson in the next garden thought he was being addressed.
"What's that?" he said.
"Georgie, come to the fence a minute," said Mrs Quantock. "I want to speak to you."
Georgie, longing for a little gossip, let go of the handle of his roller, which, suddenly released, gave a loud squeak and rapped him smartly on the elbow.
"Tarsome thing!" said Georgie.
He went to the fence and, being tall, could look over it. There was Mrs Quantock angrily poking Lucia's note into the flower-bed she had been weeding.
"What is it?" said Georgie. "Shall I like it?"
His face red, and moist with exertion, appearing just over the top of the fence, looked like the