Bliss, and Other Stories

Prelude

1

There was not an inch of room for Lottie and Kezia in the buggy. When Pat swungthem on top of the luggage they wobbled; the grandmother’s lap was fulland Linda Burnell could not possibly have held a lump of a child on hers forany distance. Isabel, very superior, was perched beside the new handy-man onthe driver’s seat. Hold-alls, bags and boxes were piled upon the floor.“These are absolute necessities that I will not let out of my sight forone instant,” said Linda Burnell, her voice trembling with fatigue andexcitement.

Lottie and Kezia stood on the patch of lawn just inside the gate all ready forthe fray in their coats with brass anchor buttons and little round caps withbattleship ribbons. Hand in hand, they stared with round solemn eyes first atthe absolute necessities and then at their mother.

“We shall simply have to leave them. That is all. We shall simply have tocast them off,” said Linda Burnell. A strange little laugh flew from herlips; she leaned back against the buttoned leather cushions and shut her eyes,her lips trembling with laughter. Happily at that moment Mrs. Samuel Josephs,who had been watching the scene from behind her drawing-room blind, waddleddown the garden path.

“Why nod leave the chudren with be for the afterdoon, Brs. Burnell? Theycould go on the dray with the storeban when he comes in the eveding. Thosethigs on the path have to go, dod’t they?”

“Yes, everything outside the house is supposed to go,” said LindaBurnell, and she waved a white hand at the tables and chairs standing on theirheads on the front lawn. How absurd they looked! Either they

BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!

Sitemize Üyelik ÜCRETSİZDİR!