Our Clare doesn’t much care for real life,′ Drew told Jane. ‘What she needs is to live in a book– the kind that no longer gets written.
What with books and chocolate, there’s not much else you could have in it, is there?
I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later.
I think your father believes that the interest so many people take in puzzles and problems – which often starts in earliest childhood – represents more than a mere desire for recreation; that it may even derive from man’s eternal curiosity about his origin. Anyway, it makes use of certain faculties for progressive, cumulative search which no other mental exercise does.
The pictures are postcard reproductions of Old Masters. She has lots of metal animals about an inch long, little wooden shoes, painted boxes only big enough to hold stamps.
Perhaps he found beauty saddening – I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty’s evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die.
I pulled my mind off the table and stared into the dimness beyond, and then I gradually saw the servants as real people, watching us, whispering instructions to each other, exchanging glances. I noticed a girl from Godsend village and gave her a tiny wink – and wished I hadn’t, because she let out a little snort of laughter and then looked in terror at the butler.
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known.
Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don’t notice it if you are born with it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.
Well, for inexperienced pray-ers it sometimes is. You see, they’re apt to think of God as a slot-machine. If nothing comes out they say ‘I knew dashed well it was empty’ – when the whole secret of prayer is knowing the machine’s full.” “But how can one know?” “By filling it oneself.” “With faith?” “With faith.
My whole heart was so full of Simon that even my pity for Stephen wasn’t quite real – it was only something I felt I ought to feel, more from my head than my heart. And I knew I ought to pity him all the more because I could pity him so little.
What I’d really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but happiness to look forward to.
It’s hopeless to make friends with people who never talk about themselves.
I feel quite unreasonably happy this minute, watching them both; knowing I can go and join them in the warmth, yet staying here in the cold.
I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life – despite sorrow for Father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen’s poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family’s general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.
No, that was my privilege.
We used to manage quite well when she was away sitting for artists, because in those days we lived mostly on bread, vegetables and eggs; but now that we can afford some meat or even chickens, I keep coming to grief. I scrubbed some rather dirty-looking chops with soap which proved very lingering, and I did not take certain things out of a chicken that I ought to have done. Even.
The caravans bark but the dogs move on.
I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer. It certainly helps one to believe in Him.
Neil is wearing a coat such as I never saw in my life before: checked back and front, but plain sleeves. Perhaps it was made out of two old coats – though I hope not, as that would show him to be poor and his brother mean. And it looked rather a noisily new coat. I expect it’s just American.