The Incredible Honeymoon

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Nesbit Edith. The Incredible Honeymoon

I. THE BEGINNING

II. MAKING AN AEROPLANE

III. EDEN

IV. THE SOUTH DOWNS

V. LA MANCHE

VI. CROW'S NEST

VII. TUNBRIDGE WELLS

VIII. THE ROAD TO —

IX. THE MEDWAY

X. OAK WEIR LOCK

XI. THE GUILDHALL

XII. WESTMINSTER

XIII. WARWICK

XIV. STRATFORD-ON-AVON

XV. KENILWORTH

XVI. CAERNARVON

XVII. LLANBERIS

XVIII. LONDON

XIX. HURSTMONCEAUX

XX. THE END

Отрывок из книги

THE Five Bells was asleep; asleep, at least, was the face with which it met the world. In the brick-floored kitchen, out of sight and hearing of the road, the maid was singing as she sluiced the bricks with a white mop; but if she and her mop had been state secrets, matters of life and death, they could not have been more safely hidden from any chance passer. In the bar the landlord was asleep behind the Lewes Gazette and South Coast Journal. In the parlor the landlady was asleep behind a screen of geraniums and campanulas. The ornamental clock on the mantelpiece said, most untruly, ten minutes to eight. Really it was four o'clock, the sleepiest hour in the day. The flies buzzed in the parlor window; in the bar the wasps buzzed in the bottle that had seemed so sweet a bourn to each as it drifted in from the out-of-door heat to the cool darkness of the sanded bar.

On the broad, white door-step the old cat slept, his person nicely adjusted to the sun and shade, his flanks in the sunshine and his head in the shadow of the porch. The white blind of the window swelled out, now and then, like a sail, because in this sort of weather one leaves all doors and windows open. In the yard some one had drawn a bucket of water – the brown oak and the brown iron of the bucket were still wet, and still wet the trail it had made where it was carried to the old bath that the chickens drank from. But the trail was drying quickly, and the hens, having had their drink, had gone to sleep in the hollows they had scooped for themselves in the dust of their inclosure. Some one had been chopping wood, for a few chips lay round the block, in which the bill was stuck by its sharp edge. The man who attended to the wood and water was asleep, standing against the ladder that led from the stable to the hay-loft – a convenient position, and, if you were wanted in a hurry, not compromising, as lying down would be.

.....

And this, too, happened. And after tea, when Charles had been partially calmed by five whole buns, eaten in five eager mouthfuls, they undid the parcels, and Tommy reveled in the tools and metals, the wood, the canvas, the dozen other things he knew neither the names nor the uses of. And when it was time to say good night and they had said it, Tommy wanted to say something else. He stood by the parlor door, shuffling his boots and looking with blue, adoring eyes at the stranger.

"I say," he said.

.....