Cottage Sayings And Quotes

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.

When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

I'll keep it," she said. "Then, when you get back, after you and the dark one are done making out and planning a future filled with blond-haired, green-eyed, pigment-challeneged rug rats, I'll bring it over and you can add it to your scrapbook, right before you start cooking me dinner. I like vegetarian lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta." "Gwen?" "And don't forget the mushrooms. Garlic bread, too, please. That is, as long as your vampire lover doesn't object." "I want to say thank you," Isobel said. "For... everything." "No," Gwen said. "Thank you for the delicious dinner. I can almost taste the baklava you and Darth Vader will be making for dessert. Something tells me you're gonna have to look that one up, though.

Someone, he added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less then normal size – the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, lockkeepers's lodge, the pavilion for viewing the landscape, the children's bothy in the garden – are those that offer us at least a semblance of peace, whereas no one in his right mind could truthfully say that he liked a vast edifice such as the Palace of Justice in the old Gallows Hill in Brussels. At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.

What should we read next?” Bernadette asked. “Pride and Prejudice is my favorite. So let’s do that,” Sylvia said. Are you sure, dear?” Jocelyn asked, I am. It’s time. Anyway, Persuasion has the dead mother. I don’t want to subject Prudie to that now. The mother in Pride and Prejudice on the other hand…” Don’t give anything away,” Grigg said. “I haven’t read it yet.” Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice. Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice. Grigg had read The Mysteries of Udolpho and God knows how much science fiction – there were books all over the cottage – but he’d never found the time or inclination to read Pride and Prejudice. We really didn’t know what to say.

The door to the cottage was open. She was standing there in her nightdress, breathing deeply of the daybreak air. She was tall and slender, with coppery hair that fell in curls around her shoulders. Hearing him, she turned to Jonas and smiled. He thought he heard her say, “I see the sun.” Indeed, the sky was pink with dawn light. Then Jonas looked past Claire and saw Gabe approaching on the path.   THE END

True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated. Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.

One of the Franciscans says later, "A monk should own nothing but his harp"; meaning, I suppose, that he should value nothing but his song, the song with which it was his business as a minstrel to serenade every castle and cottage, the song of the joy of the Creator in His creation and the beauty of the brotherhood of men.

Mom let out a wistful sigh. “Finally out of the spotlight and into the background,” she said. “I’ve missed it there.” “People will still watch, my dear,” Dad said. “Just try to keep your chin up tonight, and I’ll be right beside you if you need me.” “So, same as always?” He smiled. “Same as always.” “Look, I don’t plan to kick you out or anything, but if you insist on being mushy all the time, I’ll have you in a cottage faster than you can say P-D-A.

When Geoffrey was away, the goat often took himself off. He had soon got the goats at Granny’s cottage doing his bidding, and Nanny Ogg said once that she had seen what she called ‘that devil goat’ sitting in the middle of a circle of feral goats up in the hills. She named him ‘The Mince of Darkness’ because of his small and twinkling hooves, and added, ‘Not that I don’t like him, stinky as he is. I’ve always been one for the horns, as you might say. Goats is clever. Sheep ain’t. No offence, my dear.

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it’s over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

Gran’s cottage might be tiny, and the furniture old and battered, but she ran a tight ship. As long as everything is in its right place, there’s plenty of room, she liked to say.

By the Hospital Lane goes the 'Faeries Path.' Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, 'In the name of God, who are you?' He got up and went out, saying, 'Never leave the door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.' She woke her husband and told him. 'One of the good people has been with us,' said he. ("Village Ghosts")

Let us hope that life grant an opportunity to those miserable who live in the golden palaces to taste the infinite peace of a wooden cottage in the countryside and so their misery ends!

She says I ought to throw out at least two books for every one I buy. I had new bookshelves put up in the cottage after moving in, but already the to-be-read pile is mounting on to floor of the spare room.

Maybe Ruth thought we'd be spending hours talking about my future; maybe she thought she'd have a big influence on whether or not I changed my mind.But I kept a certain distance from her, just as I did from Tommy. We didn't really talk properly again at the Cottages, and before I knew it, I was saying my goodbyes

But as it turned out, the two had a great deal in common, for both Bailey and Thackeray (named for the famous novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair) were devoted bibliophiles who believed that "a book a day kept the world at bay," as Thackeray was fond of saying. Bailey was the offspring of a generation of badgers who insisted that "Reader" was the most rewarding vocation to which a virtuous badger might be called and who gauged their week's anticipated pleasure by the height of their to-be-read pile. (Perhaps you know people like this. I do.)

Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense.

I take out my cigarettes, break each one in half, and give them to the Russians. ... Now red points glow in every face. They comfort me. It looks as though they are little windows in dark village cottages, saying that behind them are rooms full of peace.

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality.

That was my own fault for never saying no to anyone. I took on more and more. I was always the first in the door and the last home. I told myself it was ambition and that’s partly true, but it was also fear.” She could admit that to herself now. “The drive to succeed came from a place of insecurity.

What I’m saying is that we were all of us struggling to adjust to our new life, and I suppose we all did things back then we later regretted. I was really upset by Ruth’s remark at the time, but it’s pointless now trying to judge her or anyone else for the way they behaved during those early days at the Cottages.

Why is my mother texting me about how hot you are?" "Weird. Think it has anything to do with the fact I just went to the bookstore in nothing but a patent leather trench coat?" Charlie replies with a screenshot of some texts between him and his mom. "Cottage guest is very pretty", Sally writes, then separately, "No ring." Charlie replied: "Oh? Thinking of leaving Dad?" She ignored his comment and instead said, "Tall. You always liked tall girls." "What are you talking about" Charlie wrote back, no question mark. "Remember your homecoming date? Lilac Walter-Hixton? She was practically a giant" "That was the eighth-grade formal" he said "it was before my growth spurt." "Well this girl's very pretty and tall but not too tall." "Tall but not TOO tall," I tell Charlie, "can also be added to my headstone. He says "I'll make a note." I say, "She told me you would bring wood over to the cottage for me." He says "Please swear to me you didn't make a 'too late for that' joke.

By noon Carter reached the jasper terraces of Kiran which slope down to the river's edge and bear that temple of loveliness wherein the King of Ilek-Vad comes from his far realm on the twilight sea once a year in a golden palanquin to pray to the god of Oukranos, who sang to him in youth when he dwelt in a cottage by its banks. All of jasper is that temple, and covering an acre of ground with its walls and courts, its seven pinnacled towers, and its inner shrine where the river enters through hidden channels and the god sings softly in the night. Many times the moon hears strange music as it shines on those courts and terraces and pinnacles, but whether that music be the song of the god or the chant of the cryptical priests, none but the King of Ilek-Vad may say; for only he had entered the temple or seen the priests. Now, in the drowsiness of day, that carven and delicate fane was silent, and Carter heard only the murmur of the great stream and the hum of the birds and bees as he walked onward under the enchanted sun.

Most people sleepwalk through life playing the game. They’re like sheeple.” “Sheeple?” “Part people, part sheep,” he says, “following the herd mentality.

But I’m family,” Sara said. “You can say anything to me. There is no wrong thing. You don’t have to watch your words or protect yourself.

brain as a shadow passes away upon a white screen. She lives in the cottage and works for Miss Swaffer. She is Amy Foster for everybody, and the child is 'Amy Foster's boy.' She calls him Johnny—which means Little John. "It is impossible to say whether this name recalls anything to her. Does she ever think of the past? I have seen her hanging over the boy's cot in a

Words are like birds,’ says Mr Bradbury. ‘When you publish books, you are setting caged birds free. They can go wherever they please. They can fly over the highest walls and across vast distances, settling in the mansions of the gentry, in farmsteads and labourers’ cottages alike. You never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet songs.

I encouraged my patients to floss. It was hard to do some days. They should have flossed. Flossing prevents periodontal disease and can extend life up to seven years. It’s also time consuming and a general pain in the ass. That’s not the dentist talking. That’s the guy who comes home, four or five drinks in him, what a great evening, ha-has all around, and, the minute he takes up the floss, says to himself, What’s the point? In the end, the heart stops, the cells die, the neurons go dark, bacteria consumes the pancreas, flies lay their eggs, beetles chew through tendons and ligaments, the skin turns to cottage cheese, the bones dissolve, and the teeth float away with the tide. But then someone who never flossed a day in his life would come in, the picture of inconceivable self-neglect and unnecessary pain— rotted teeth, swollen gums, a live wire of infection running from enamel to nerve— and what I called hope, what I called courage, above all what I called defiance, again rose up in me, and I would go around the next day or two saying to all my patients, “You must floss, please floss, flossing makes all the difference.

Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name.

I appreciate it. It’s the right thing to do.”   “You make it sound as if I’m doing it for you,” Aron says, amused. He studies my face for a moment longer and then releases me.   “Well, aren’t you?” I retort back. “Doing this for me? Unless you were planning on doing it before I said anything out of the goodness of your own heart?”   “No,” he admits with a chuckle. “It did not occur to me.”   “That’s why I’m here,” I tell him sassily, turning back toward the cottage.   “So you can be my heart?” he asks as I start to walk away.   My own heart skips a beat. I smile as I hold my sleeve to my nose and head for the cottage.

Sometimes,” he said, “life does seem to be unfair. Do you know the story of Elijah and the Rabbi Jachanan?” “No,” said the Wart. He sat down resignedly upon the most comfortable part of the floor, perceiving that he was in for something like the parable of the looking-glass. “This rabbi,” said Merlyn, “went on a journey with the prophet Elijah. They walked all day, and at nightfall they came to the humble cottage of a poor man, whose only treasure was a cow. The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straitened circumstances. Elijah and the Rabbi were entertained with plenty of the cow’s milk, sustained by home-made bread and butter, and they were put to sleep in the best bed while their kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire. But in the morning the poor man’s cow was dead.” “Go on.” “They walked all the next day, and came that evening to the house of a very wealthy merchant, whose hospitality they craved. The merchant was cold and proud and rich, and all that he would do for the prophet and his companion was to lodge them in a cowshed and feed them on bread and water. In the morning, however, Elijah thanked him very much for what he had done, and sent for a mason to repair one of his walls, which happened to be falling down, as a return for his kindness. “The Rabbi Jachanan, unable to keep silence any longer, begged the holy man to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings. “ ‘In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,’ replied the prophet, ‘it was decreed that his wife was to die that night, but in reward for his goodness God took the cow instead of the wife. I repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was concealed near the place, and if the miser had repaired the wall himself he would have discovered the treasure. Say not therefore to the Lord: What doest thou? But say in thy heart: Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?’

People stare at the floor. Even to look at a homeless person is to sign a contract with them. I dabbled with joining the Samaritans once. The supervisor had been homeless for three years. I remember him saying that the worst thing was the invisibility. That and not being able to go anywhere where nobody else could go. Imagine that, owning nothing with a lock, except a toilet cubicle in King’s Cross Station, with a junkie on one side and a pair of cottagers on the other.

Gavin meets us outside the cottage. I notice he’s carrying weapons, as if he’s been training for this. He glances at my sword and his lips quirk up. “Now this sight brings back fond memories. Though I admit, I miss the torn dresses. Trousers just don’t have the same touch of reckless insanity.” I roll my eyes. “Trust you to flirt with me right before a battle. What happened to Brooding Gavin?” “Brooding Gavin had a city to protect,” he says. “All I have now is my own arse. Oh, and this whisky.” He pulls open his coat and the bottle is right there in the inside pocket. He’s actually determined to save that shite single malt. “You’re ridiculous,” I tell him. Aithinne, however, brightens when she sees it. “Thank god,” she says. “Save a dram for me. I always like a spot of whisky after I murder things.” God help me. Or kill me now. Just put me out of my misery.

I don't like you very much,” she says in a small voice. “You'll like me better when I've tied you to the bed in your parents' cottage.” She makes a noise that's half rage, half lust. Oh, I've got her number. I really do. “I brought four neckties in preparation, Hermès, of course. Very silky.

out my cigarettes, break each one in half and give them to the Russians. They bow to me and then light the cigarettes. Now red points glow in every face. They comfort me; it looks as though there were little windows in dark village cottages saying that behind them are rooms full of peace. The

Georgiana added to her ‘How d’ye do?’ several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a ‘quiz’ without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.

unlike birds, for instance, who keep building the same nest over thousands of years, we tend to forge ahead with our projects far beyond any reasonable bounds. Someone, he added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types buildings listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less than normal size—the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, the lockkeeper’s lodge, the pavilion for viewing the landscape, the children’s bothy in the garden—are those that offer us at least a semblance of peace, whereas no one in his right mind could truthfully say that he liked a vast edifice such as the Palace of Justice on the old Gallows Hill in Brussels. At the most we gaze at it in wonder, a kind of wonder which in itself is a form of dawning horror, for somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins.

When people say they come from the country, they say it abjectly, apologetically. Unlike Londoners, Tokyoites do not drive out to the country at the weekend or yearn for a country cottage. Everyone, if they had the chance, would live in Tokyo. Four hours to the next train, while inconceivable in Tokyo, was only to be expected of inaka.

To the sound of his unbroken sobbing and the woman’s groans I managed, if the truth be known, to break the baby’s arm. The child was born dead. God, how the sweat ran down my back! For an instant I somehow imagined that some huge, grim, black figure would appear and burst into the cottage, saying in a stony voice: ‘Aha! Take away his degree!

Why couldn't my mother and I figure out how it was done? My mother deserved a home. It didn't even need to be a mansion, just a little cottage with a rose garden and cream colored curtains and rugs that were soft and clean and kissed your bare feet as you walked across them. That would be plenty. It mad me mad that my mother didn't have nice things, madder still that I couldn't provide them for her, and furious that I couldn't say any of this aloud, because my mother was striving to be upbeat. Taking care of my mother meant saying nothing to disrupt her fragile optimism, so I would press my forehead against the window, harder until it hurt, and shift my focus from the mansions to my reflection in the glass.

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved. To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese. Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing. But say you’ve inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it’s soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure. More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn’t get any better than that.

CHAPTER ONE A Boy at the Window FOR A LONG TIME AFTER THAT SUMMER, the four Penderwick sisters still talked of Arundel. Fate drove us there, Jane would say. No, it was the greedy landlord who sold our vacation house on Cape Cod, someone else would say, probably Skye. Who knew which was right? But it was true that the beach house they usually rented had been sold at the last minute, and the Penderwicks were suddenly without summer plans. Mr. Penderwick called everywhere, but Cape Cod was booked solid, and his daughters were starting to think they would be spending their whole vacation at home in Cameron, Massachusetts. Not that they didn’t love Cameron, but what is summer without a trip to somewhere special? Then, out of the blue, Mr. Penderwick heard through a friend of a friend about a cottage in the Berkshire Mountains. It had plenty of bedrooms and a big fenced-in pen for a dog—perfect for big, black, clumsy, lovable Hound Penderwick—and it was available to be rented for three weeks in August. Mr. Penderwick snatched it up, sight unseen. He didn’t know what he was getting us into, Batty would say. Rosalind always said, It’s too bad Mommy never saw Arundel—she would have loved the gardens. And Jane would say, There are much better gardens in heaven. And Mommy will never have to bump into Mrs. Tifton in heaven, Skye added to make her sisters laugh. And laugh they would, and the talk would move on to other things, until the next time someone remembered Arundel.

CROSSROAD Lights flicker above the crossroad shining in green now and then for people who won't cross and red for others - which won't stop; The dull grey splits the city in pieces of lines and corners, sometimes outshined by heavy rain and flooded glimpses of chaos; Broken glass upon crimson roads empty silence and nothing to say - while the city sleeps on and will awake, eventually.

In fiction, the story ends when Prince Charming whisks Cinderella away to his castle. But there’s a reason why the poor girl who wins herself a prince is usually an orphan. Because if she wasn’t… “Darling,” Charming would say in the scene after the end, “you know I love you, doll. But we have to talk about your parents. I’m thinking I should buy them a cottage, maybe something high up in the mountains, yeah? Don’t worry. You can always call. You can even visit them when I’m busy with my affairs of state.” Even with Cinderella’s essentially family-less status, the story always ends before the painful, embarrassing scenes that come a few years in. “Darling, I never meant to fall in love with Snow White. I swear it. But she was raised in a castle as a princess, you know? She gets me in a way you never will.

Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wisemen ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice. The wilderness and the solitary place have been made glad by it, and the fire on the hearth has lighted the reading of its well-worn pages. It has woven itself into our deepest affections, and colored our dearest dreams; so that love and friendship, sympathy and devotion, memory and hope, put on the beautiful garments of its treasured speech, breathing of frankincense and myrrh. Above the cradle and beside the grave its great words come to us uncalled. They fill our prayers with power larger than we know, and the beauty of them lingers in our ear long after the sermons which they have adorned have been forgotten. They return to us swiftly and quietly, like birds flying from far away. They surprise us with new meanings, like springs of water breaking forth from the mountain beside a long-forgotten path. They grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, "Good-by, we shall meet again"; and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light.

Even the Terrible Old Man who talks to leaden pendulums in bottles, buys groceries with centuried Spanish gold, and keeps stone idols in the yard of his antediluvian cottage in Water Street can only say these things were the same when his grandfather was a boy, and that must have been inconceivable ages ago, when Belcher or Shirley or Pownall or Bernard was Governor of His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay.

QUIET WRITING Quiet does not mean that we have nothing to say, or that we leak the power of speech - we rise up and tell our truths even if it feels like people don't like it the least; Writing is our means to have something to tell when we lost our voice suddenly we still stand behind our truths even if it feels like people won't like it. Beautifully are the quiet lines written with thunder and silent boldness - for we can have a revolution inside the pages of nowadays.

If I thought I could ever grow as hard and different to the abject entreaties of a criminal as my father has been this morning–one whom he has helped to make, too–I would go off to Australia at once. Indeed, Maggie, I think it would be the best thing we could do. My heart aches about the mysterious corruptions and evils of an old state of society such as we have in England.–What do you say Maggie? Would you go?” She was silent–thinking. “I would go with you directly, if it were right,” said she, at last. “But would it be? I think it would be rather cowardly. I feel what you say; but don’t you think it would be braver to stay, and endure much depression and anxiety of mind, for the sake of the good those always can do who see evils clearly. I am speaking all this time as if neither you nor I had any home duties, but were free to do as me liked.” “What can you or I do? We are less than drops in the ocean, as far as our influence can go to model a nation?” “As

It would be easier to be smart if I didn't want to be inside you. Didn't want to feel you come." She shuddered. Sex had always been a subject they'd never discussed. One of those taboo topics they avoided. It was strange to hear him utter those words, say things she'd never envisioned him saying to her, but they lit her on fire. "If we still feel this way on Friday, maybe you will." His lips brushed her throat, raising the fine hairs there. "I can give you an orgasm and not fuck you.

One time, when I was little more than a baby, I was taken to visit my grandmother, who was living in a cottage on a nearly uninhabited stretch of beach in northern Florida. All I remember of this visit is being picked up from my crib in what seemed the middle of the night and carried from my bedroom and out of doors, where I had my first look at the stars. “It must have been an unusually clear and beautiful night for someone to have said, “Let’s wake the baby and show her the stars.” The night sky, the constant rolling of the breakers against the shore, the stupendous light of the stars, all made an indelible impression on me. I was intuitively aware not only of a beauty I had never seen before but also that the world was far greater than the protected limits of the small child’s world which was all I had known thus far. I had a total, if not very conscious, moment of revelation: I saw creation bursting the bounds of daily restriction, and stretching out from dimension to dimension, beyond any human comprehension. I had been taught to say my prayers at night: Our Father, and a long string of God-blesses, and it was that first showing of the galaxies which gave me an awareness that the God I spoke to at bedtime was extraordinary and not just a bigger and better combination of the grownup powers of my father and mother. This early experience was freeing, rather than daunting, and since it was the first, it has been the foundation for all other such glimpses of glory. (The Irrational Season)

The house belongs to us. James and I grew up here. That mansion is our home," Mia replied with a sweet smile. "Or, well, it was. James and Lily have their own little cottage now." The Dursleys looked dumbfounded, which Mia discovered was not very difficult for them. "Grew up here?" Petunia gaped at Mia. "So, it's just you here, then? That big house all to yourself?" Mia could tell by the tone of voice that the woman was trying to be polite now that she was aware the Potters had money. "Oh no, I moved to London." She then pointed to Sirius and Remus standing beside James, pouring drinks for one another. "I live with those two handsome men." Petunia blushed furiously, looking scandalised. "You live with two men?" Mia grinned, half tempted to tell her, in detail, what she and those two men had done right here in this very orchard. The particular shade of red on Petunia's face was intriguing, to say the least, but nowhere near as amusing as the purple that Vernon was turning as he muttered, "shameful" and "scandalous" under his breath.

From the Bullens’ cottage came Father and Alf. They were carrying Granny on her old straw pallet. Hannah followed with the rest of the family. Showers of sparks were blowing on to the roof and against the side wall that was weather-boarded. Mother was clutching her case of stuffed birds and the family Bible. Granny was singing. Hannah said: ‘Yer’d best take ‘er up near the church and put ‘er somewheres out of the wind. Ermie and Doris, you go with Gran and stay close to ‘er, see? Don’t come down ‘ere again. Now mind what I says, you two stays by yer Gran; and Mother, you’d better go along with ‘em.

Mrs. Buxton did not make a set labor of teaching; I suppose she felt that much was learned from her superintendence, but she never thought of doing or saying anything with a latent idea of its indirect effect upon the little girls, her companions. She was simply herself; she even confessed (where the confession was called for) to short-comings, to faults, and never denied the force of temptations, either of those which beset little children, or of those which occasionally assailed herself. Pure, simple, and truthful to the heart's core, her life, in its uneventful hours and days, spoke many homilies.

Stop,” Jesse said. I stared up at him, almost panting with fear. “Stop, beloved,” he said more gently, and took up my clenched fist with both hands. “I’ve upset you, and I shouldn’t have. I don’t want you to dread yourself. I don’t want you to dread what is to come. Like I said, you’re exceptional, so there may be nothing to worry about at all. But whatever happens, whatever you face, I’ll face it with you. Do you hear?” “How can you say it? It nearly happened on the roof today. You can’t know-“ “I will be with you. We’re together now, and the universe knows I won’t let you make your sacrifice alone. Dragon protects star. Star adores dragon. An age-old axiom. Simple as that.” I looked down at our hands, both of his curled over mine. I unclenched my fist. Blood from the thorn smeared my skin. “The universe,” I muttered. “The same universe that has produced the Kaiser and bedbugs and Chloe Pemington. How reassuring.” With the same absolute concentration he might have shown for turning flowers into gold, Jesse Holms smoothed out my fingers between his, wiping away the blood. He turned my hand over and lifted it to his lips. His next words fell soft as velvet into the heart of my palm. “Those nights, in the sweetest dark, we shared our dreams. That’s you answer. I was stitched into yours, and you were stitched into mind, and that was real, I promise you.” I felt his lips curve into a smile. The unbelievably sensual, ticklish scuff of his whiskers. “Very good dreams they were, too,” he added. It was no use trying to cling to mortification or fear. He was holding my hand. He was smiling at me past the cup of my fingers, and although I couldn’t see it, the shape of it against my skin was beyond tantalizing, rough and masculine. I was a creature gone hot and cold and light-headed with pleasure. I wanted to snatch back my hand and I wanted him to go on touching me like this forever. I wanted to walk with him back to his cottage, to his bed, and to hell with the Germans and school and all the rest of the world. But he looked up suddenly. “They’re searching for you,” he said, releasing me at once, moving away. They were. I heard my name being called by a variety of voices in a variety of tones, all of them still inside the castle, none of them sounding happy. “Go on.” With a few quick steps, Jesse was less than a shadow, retreating into the black wall of the woods. “Don’t get into trouble. And, Lora?” “Yes?” There was hushed laughter in his voice. “Until we can see each other again, do us both a favor. Keep away from rooftops.

A hungry Wolf was prowling about in search of food. By and by, attracted by the cries of a Child, he came to a cottage. As he crouched beneath the window, he heard the Mother say to the Child, “Stop crying, do! or I’ll throw you to the Wolf.” Thinking she really meant what she said, he waited there a long time in the expectation of satisfying his hunger. In the evening he heard the Mother fondling her Child and saying, “If the naughty Wolf comes, he shan’t get my little one: Daddy will kill him.” The Wolf got up in much disgust and walked away: “As for the people in that house,” said he to himself, “you can’t believe a word they say.

The doc thinks not. His view is that they are caused by my being a typical young man about town who doesn't go to bed early enough. He says I must leg it to the country and breathe pure air, so I shall need a cottage.' 'With honeysuckle climbing over the door and old Mister Moon peeping in through the window?' 'That sort of thing. Any idea how one sets about getting a cottage of that description?' 'I'll find you one. Jimmy Briscoe has dozens. And Maiden Eggesford, where he lives, is not far from the popular seaside resort of Bridmouth-on-Sea, notorious for its invigorating air. Corpses at Bridmouth-on-Sea leap from their biers and dance round the maypole.

For myself, master, I never took with that hand’ — holding it before him— ‘what wasn’t my own; and never held it back from work, however hard, or poorly paid. Whoever can deny it, let him chop it off! But when work won’t maintain me like a human creetur; when my living is so bad, that I am Hungry, out of doors and in; when I see a whole working life begin that way, go on that way, and end that way, without a chance or change; then I say to the gentlefolks “Keep away from me! Let my cottage be. My doors is dark enough without your darkening of ‘em more. Don’t look for me to come up into the Park to help the show when there’s a Birthday, or a fine Speechmaking, or what not.

Is there a bird among them, dear boy?” Charity asked innocently, peering not at the things on the desk, but at his face, noting the muscle beginning to twitch at Ian’s tense jaw. “No.” “Then they must be in the schoolroom! Of course,” she said cheerfully, “that’s it. How like me, Hortense would say, to have made such a silly mistake.” Ian dragged his eyes from the proof that his grandfather had been keeping track of him almost from the day of his birth-certainly from the day when he was able to leave the cottage on his own two legs-to her face and said mockingly, “Hortense isn’t very perceptive. I would say you are as wily as a fox.” She gave him a little knowing smile and pressed her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell her, will you? She does so enjoy thinking she is the clever one.” “How did he manage to have these drawn?” Ian asked, stopping her as she turned away. “A woman in the village near your home drew many of them. Later he hired an artist when he knew you were going to be somewhere at a specific time. I’ll just leave you here where it’s nice and quiet.” She was leaving him, Ian knew, to look through the items on the desk. For a long moment he hesitated, and then he slowly sat down in the chair, looking over the confidential reports on himself. They were all written by one Mr. Edgard Norwich, and as Ian began scanning the thick stack of pages, his anger at his grandfather for this outrageous invasion of his privacy slowly became amusement. For one thing, nearly every letter from the investigator began with phrases that made it clear the duke had chastised him for not reporting in enough detail. The top letter began, I apologize, Your Grace, for my unintentional laxness in failing to mention that indeed Mr. Thornton enjoys an occasional cheroot… The next one opened with, I did not realize, Your Grace, that you would wish to know how fast his horse ran in the race-in addition to knowing that he won. From the creases and holds in the hundreds of reports it was obvious to Ian that they’d been handled and read repeatedly, and it was equally obvious from some of the investigator’s casual comments that his grandfather had apparently expressed his personal pride to him: You will be pleased to know, Your Grace, that young Ian is a fine whip, just as you expected… I quite agree with you, as do many others, that Mr. Thornton is undoubtedly a genius… I assure you, Your Grace, that your concern over that duel is unfounded. It was a flesh wound in the arm, nothing more. Ian flipped through them at random, unaware that the barricade he’d erected against his grandfather was beginning to crack very slightly. “Your Grace,” the investigator had written in a rare fit of exasperation when Ian was eleven, “the suggestion that I should be able to find a physician who might secretly look at young Ian’s sore throat is beyond all bounds of reason. Even if I could find one who was willing to pretend to be a lost traveler, I really cannot see how he could contrive to have a peek at the boy’s throat without causing suspicion!” The minutes became an hour, and Ian’s disbelief increased as he scanned the entire history of his life, from his achievements to his peccadilloes. His gambling gains and losses appeared regularly; each ship he added to his fleet had been described, and sketches forwarded separately; his financial progress had been reported in minute and glowing detail.

The abbot had called her a sweet soul. This was true, but she was also massively irritating. She fussed over Rabalyn as if he was still three years old, and her conversation was absurdly repetitive. Every time he left the little cottage she would ask: ‘Are you going to be warm enough?’ If he voiced any concerns about life, schooling or future plans, she would say: ‘I don’t know about that. It’s enough to have food on the table today.’ Her days were spent cleaning other people’s sheets and clothes. In the evenings she would unravel discarded woollen garments and create balls of faded wool. Then she would knit scores of squares, which would later be fashioned into blankets. Some she sold. Others she gave away to the poorhouse. Aunt Athyla was never idle.

I talk too much about the slightest nuance between women and trees, about the earth’s enchantment, about a country with no passport stamp, I ask: Is it true, good ladies and gentlemen, that the earth of Man is for all human beings as you say? In that case, where is my little cottage, and where am I? The conference audiences applaud me for another three minutes, three minutes of freedom and recognition. The conference approves our right of return, like all chickens and horses, to a dream made of stone. I shake hands with them, one by one. I bow to them. Then I continue my journey to another country and talk about the difference between a mirage and the rain. I ask: Is it true, good ladies and gentlemen, that the earth of Man is for all human beings?

At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times?

I think the desire to create will last all my life – I realize that the time for me to be that person has not been available, or should I say right – I have become aware that the young stage of my children’s life is passing and there will be more time for me later – it’s too easy to be a “want it now” person. But I am so glad that I will have more time very soon. Without doubt though, as luck would have it, the very best thing I have ever made is my children. I feel my spirit rise as I listen to Elizabeth’s words, and so I reach over and take the bowl… Before I had children I had a dream. A dream of the sort of mama I wanted to be. One who always had a homemade cake in a pretty tin and a jar of homemade cookies, a stylish handmade home with French-print curtains, a carefully tended cottage garden, lots of time to play together outside and making all our own Christmas presents. Happy children, happy stay-at-home mama and a beautiful life.

May I inquire what is the point?” he snapped impatiently. “Indeed you may,” Lucinda said, thinking madly for some way to prod him into remembering his long-ago desire for Elizabeth and to prick his conscience. “The point is that I am well apprised of all that transpired between Elizabeth and yourself when you were last together. I, however,” she decreed grandly, “am inclined to place the blame for your behavior not on a lack of character, but rather a lack of judgment.” He raised his brows but said nothing. Taking his silence as assent, she reiterated meaningfully, “A lack of judgment on both your parts.” “Really?” he drawled. “Of course,” she said, reaching out and brushing the dust from the back of a chair, then rubbing her fingers together and grimacing with disapproval. “What else except lack of judgment could have caused a seventeen-year-old girl to rush to the defense of a notorious gambler and bring down censure upon herself for doing it?” “What indeed?” he asked with growing impatience. Lucinda dusted off her hands, avoiding his gaze. “Who can possibly know except you and she? No doubt it was the same thing that prompted her to remain in the woodcutter’s cottage rather than leaving it the instant she discovered your presence.” Satisfied that she’d done the best she was able to on that score, she became brusque again-an attitude that was more normal and, therefore, far more convincing. “In any case, that is all water under the bridge. She has paid dearly for her lack of judgment, which is only right, and even though she is now in the most dire straits because of it, that, too, is justice.” She smiled to herself when his eyes narrowed with what she hoped was guilt, or at least concern. His next words disabused her of that hope: “Madam, I do not have all day to waste in aimless conversation. If you have something to say, say it and be done!” “Very well,” Lucinda said, gritting her teeth to stop herself from losing control of her temper. “My point is that it is my duty, my obligation to see to Lady Cameron’s physical well-being as well as to chaperon her. In this case, given the condition of your dwelling, the former obligation seems more pressing than the latter, particularly since it is obvious to me that the two of you are not in the least need of a chaperon to keep you from behaving with impropriety. You may need a referee to keep you from murdering each other, but a chaperon is entirely superfluous. Therefore, I feel duty-bound to now ensure that adequate servants are brought here at once. In keeping with that, I would like your word as a gentleman not to abuse her verbally or physically while I am gone. She has already been ill-used by her uncle. I will not permit anyone else to make this terrible time in her life more difficult than it already is.” “Exactly what,” Ian asked in spite of himself, “do you mean by a ‘terrible time’?” “I am not at liberty to discuss that, of course,” she said, fighting to keep her triumph from her voice. “I am merely concerned that you behave as a gentleman. Will you give me your word?” Since Ian had no intention of laying a finger on her, or even spending time with her, he didn’t hesitate to nod. “She’s perfectly safe from me.” “That is exactly what I hoped to hear,” Lucinda lied ruthlessly.

I’ll wait for you at the cottage until noon tomorrow.” “I won’t be there.” “I’ll wait until noon,” he insisted. “You will be wasting your time. Let go of me, please. This has all been a mistake!” “Then we may as well make two of them,” he said harshly, and his arm abruptly tightened, bringing her closer to his body. “Look at me, Elizabeth,” he whispered, and his warm breath stirred the hair at her temple. Warning bells screamed through her, belated but loud. If she lifted her head, he was going to kiss her. “I do not want you to kiss me,” she warned him, but it wasn’t completely true. “Then say good-bye to me now.” Elizabeth lifted her head, dragging her eyes past his finely sculpted mouth to meet his gaze. “Good-bye,” she told him, amazed that her voice didn’t shake. His eyes moved down her face as if he were memorizing it, then they fixed on her lips. His hands slid down her arms and abruptly released her as he stepped back. “Good-bye, Elizabeth.” Elizabeth turned and took a step, but the regret in his deep voice made her turn back…or perhaps it had been her own heart that had twisted as if she was leaving something behind-something she’d regret. Separated by less than two feet physically and a chasm socially, they looked at each other in silence. “They’ve probably noticed our absence,” she said lamely, and she wasn’t certain whether she was making excuses for leaving him there or hoping he’d convince her to remain. “Possibly.” His expression was impassive, his voice coolly polite, as if he was already beyond her reach again. “I really must go back.” “Of course.” “You do understand, don’t you…” Elizabeth voice trailed off as she looked at the tall, handsome man whom society deemed unsuitable merely because he wasn’t a blue blood, and suddenly she hated all the restrictions of the stupid social system that was trying to enslave her. Swallowing, she tried again, wishing that he’d either tell her to go or open his arms to her as he had when he’d asked her to dance. “You do understand that I can’t possibly be with you tomorrow…” “Elizabeth,” he interrupted in a husky whisper, and suddenly his eyes were smoldering as he held out his hand, sensing victory before Elizabeth ever realized she was defeated. “Come here.

Oh, good. I was worried you’d taken ill.” “Why?” Elizabeth asked as she took a sip of the chocolate. It was cold as ice! “Because I couldn’t wake-“ “What time is it?” Elizabeth cried. “Nearly eleven.” “Eleven! But I told you to wake me at eight! How could you let me oversleep this way?” she said, her sleep-drugged mind already groping wildly for a solution. She could dress quickly and catch up with everyone. Or… “I did try,” Berta exclaimed, hurt by the uncharacteristic sharpness in Elizabeth’s tone, “but you didn’t want to wake up.” “I never want to awaken, Berta, you know that!” “But you were worse this morning than normal. You said your head ached.” “I always say things like that. I don’t know what I’m saying when I’m asleep. I’ll say anything to bargain for a few minutes’ more sleep. You’ve known that for years, and you always shake me awake anyway.” “But you said,” Berta persisted, tugging unhappily a her apron, “that since it rained so much last night you were sure the trip to the village wouldn’t take place, so you didn’t have to arise at all.” “Berta, for heaven’s sake!” Elizabeth cried, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed with more energy than she’d ever shown after such a short period of wakefulness. “I’ve told you I’m dying of diphtheria to make you go away, and that didn’t succeed!” “Well,” Berta shot back, marching over to the bell pull and ringing for a bath to be brought up, “when you told me that, your face wasn’t pale and your head didn’t feel hot to my touch. And you hadn’t dragged yourself into bed as if you could hardly stand when it was half past one in the morning!” Contrite, Elizabeth slumped down in the bed. “It’s not your fault that I sleep like a hibernating bear. And besides, if they didn’t go to the village, it makes no difference at all that I overslept.” She was trying to resign herself to the notion of spending the day in the house with a man who could look at her across a roomful of diners and make her heart leap when Berta said, “They did go to the village. Last night’s storm was more noise and threat than rain.” Closing her eyes for a brief moment, Elizabeth emitted a long sigh. It was already eleven, which meant Ian had already begun his useless vigil at the cottage.

Elizabeth automatically started forward three steps, then halted, mesmerized. An acre of thick Aubusson carpet stretched across the book-lined room, and at the far end of it, seated behind a massive baronial desk with his shirtsleeves folded up on tanned forearms, was the man who had lied in the little cottage in Scotland and shot at a tree limb with her. Oblivious to the other three men in the room who were politely coming to their feet, Elizabeth watched Ian arise with that same natural grace that seemed so much a part of him. With a growing sense of unreality she heard him excuse himself to his visitors, saw him move away from behind his desk, and watched him start toward her with long, purposeful strides. He grew larger as he neared, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the room, his amber eyes searching her face, his smile one of amusement and uncertainty. “Elizabeth?” he said. Her eyes wide with embarrassed admiration, Elizabeth allowed him to lift her hand to his lips before she said softly, “I could kill you.” He grinned at the contrast between her words and her voice. “I know.” “You might have told me.” “I hoped to surprise you.” More correctly, he had hoped she didn’t know, and now he had his proof: Just as he had thought, Elizabeth had agreed to marry him without knowing anything of his personal wealth. That expression of dazed disbelief on her face had been real. He’d needed to see it for himself, which was why he’d instructed his butler to bring her to him as soon as she arrived. Ian had his proof, and with it came the knowledge that no matter how much she refused to admit it to him or to herself, she loved him. She could insist for now and all time that all she wanted from marriage was independence, and now Ian could endure it with equanimity. Because she loved him. Elizabeth watched the expressions play across his face. Thinking he was waiting for her to say more about his splendid house, she gave him a jaunty smile and teasingly said, “’Twill be a sacrifice, to be sure, but I shall contrive to endure the hardship of living in such a place as this. How many rooms are there?” she asked. His brows rose in mockery. “One hundred and eighty-two.” “A small place of modest proportions,” she countered lightly. “I suppose we’ll just have to make do.” Ian thought they were going to do very well.

And so, as he became a man, he began to search for a name of his own. Eventually his quest took him far from the shores where he was born...he began to fight in the name of another man. Some might say that the boy's quest had failed. For he would forever be nameless in his own land. A pale girl he had once loved would think of him sometimes, on a bright spring day in her cold stone castle. But she would never speak his name. A family in a small, dark cottage would mourn their lost son when the war ended and he did not come home. But none of them would ever know how his end came, and as years passed they would wonder out loud about his fate less and less until they stopped altogether. And when they were gone, too, his name would never be spoken again in the land of his birth. No mothers would tell their sons and daughters his story as they held their children on their knees in front of the fireplace. No singers would compose odes to his deeds. And the queen of the kingdom across the sea would never know that a boy from her island met his end alone in the dark, fighting another ruler's war. But not so in the desert. In the desert, the boy would never be nameless again.

I open the door to see him on my doorstep and he doesn’t even say hello. He says, “Let’s cut the crap, Daisy. You need to record this album or Runner’s taking you to court.” I said, “I don’t care about any of that. They can take their money back, get me kicked out of here if they want. I’ll live in a cardboard box.” I was very annoying. I had no idea what it meant to truly suffer. Teddy said, “Just get in the studio, love. How hard is that?” I told him, “I want to write my own stuff.” I think I even crossed my arms in front of my chest like a child. He said, “I’ve read your stuff. Some of it’s really good. But you don’t have a single song that’s finished. You don’t have anything ready to be recorded.” He said I should fulfill my contract with Runner and he would help me get my songs to a point where I could release an album of my own stuff. He called it “a goal for us all to work toward.” I said, “I want to release my own stuff now.” And that’s when he got testy with me. He said, “Do you want to be a professional groupie? Is that what you want? Because the way it looks from here is that you have a chance to do something of your own. And you’d rather just end up pregnant by Bowie.” Let me take this opportunity to be clear about one thing: I never slept with David Bowie. At least, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I said, “I am an artist. So you either let me record the album I want or I’m not showing up. Ever.” Teddy said, “Daisy, someone who insists on the perfect conditions to make art isn’t an artist. They’re an asshole.” I shut the door in his face. And sometime later that day, I opened up my songbook and I started reading. I hated to admit it but I could see what he was saying. I had good lines but I didn’t have anything polished from beginning to end. The way I was working then, I’d have a loose melody in my head and I’d come up with lyrics to it and then I’d move on. I didn’t work on my songs after one or two rounds. I was sitting in the living room of my cottage, looking out the window, my songbook in my lap, realizing that if I didn’t start trying—I mean being willing to squeeze out my own blood, sweat, and tears for what I wanted—I’d never be anything, never matter much to anybody. I called Teddy a few days later, I said, “I’ll record your album. I’ll do it.” And he said, “It’s your album.” And I realized he was right. The album didn’t have to be exactly my way for it to still be mine.

Don’t worry,” he said flippantly, taking her arm and starting to walk back toward the house. “I’m not going to make the ritualistic proposal that followed our last encounters. Marriage is out of the question. Among other things, I’m fresh out of large rubies and expensive furs this season.” Despite his joking tone, Elizabeth felt ill at how ugly those words sounded now, even though her reasons for saying them at the time had nothing to do with a desire for jewels or furs. You had to give him credit, she decided miserably, because he obviously took no offense at it. Evidently, in sophisticated flirtations, the rule was that no one took anything seriously. “Who’s the leading contender these days?” he asked in that same light tone as the cottage came into view. “There must be more than Belhaven and Marchman.” Elizabeth struggled valiantly to make the same transition from heated passion to flippancy that he seemed to find so easy. She wasn’t quite so successful, however, and her light tone was threaded with confusion. “In my uncle’s eyes, the leading contender is whoever has the most important title, followed by the most money.” “Of course,” he said dryly. “In which case it sounds as if Marchman may be the lucky man.” His utter lack of caring made Elizabeth’s heart squeeze in an awful, inexplicable way. Her chin lifted in self-defense. “Actually, I’m not in the market for a husband,” she informed him, trying to sound as indifferent and as amused as he. “I may have to marry someone if I can’t continue to outmaneuver my uncle, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d like to marry a much older man than I.” “Preferably a blind one,” he said sardonically, “who’ll not notice a little affair now and then?” “I meant,” she informed him with a dark glance, “that I want my freedom. Independence. And that is something a young husband isn’t likely to give me, while an elderly one might.” “Independence is all an old man will be able to give you,” Ian said blntly. “That’s quite enough,” she said. “I’m excessively tired of being forever pushed about by the men in my life. I’d like to care for Havenhurst and do as I wish to do.” “Marry an old man,” Ian interjected smoothly, “and you may be the last of the Camerons.” She looked at him blankly. “He won’t be able to give you children.” “Oh, that,” Elizabeth said, feeling a little defeated and nonplussed. “I haven’t been able to work that out yet.” “Let me know when you do,” Ian replied with biting sarcasm. “There’s a fortune to be made from a discovery like that one.

Why did you cry off?” She stiffened in surprise; then, trying to match his light, mocking tone, she said, “Viscount Mondevale proved to be a trifle high in the instep about things like his fiancé cavorting about in cottages and greenhouses with you.” She fired and missed. “How many contenders are there this Season?” he asked conversationally as he turned to the target, pausing to wipe the gun. She knew he meant contenders for her hand, and pride absolutely would not allow her to say there were none, nor had there been for a long time. “Well…” she said, suppressing a grimace as she thought of her stout suitor with a houseful of cherubs. Counting on the fact that he didn’t move in the inner circles of the ton, she assumed he wouldn’t know much about either suitor. He raised the gun as she said, “There’s Sir Francis Belhaven, for one.” Instead of firing immediately as he had before, he seemed to require a long moment to adjust his aim. “Belhaven’s an old man,” he said. The gun exploded, and the twig snapped off. When he looked at her his eyes had chilled, almost as if he thought less of her. Elizabeth told herself she was imagining that and determined to maintain their mood of light conviviality. Since it was her turn, she picked up a gun and lifted it. “Who’s the other one?” Relieved that he couldn’t possibly find fault with the age of her reclusive sportsman, she gave him a mildly haughty smile. “Lord John Marchman,” she said, and she fired. Ian’s shout of laughter almost drowned out the report from the gun. “Marchman!” he said when she scowled at him and thrust the butt of the gun in his stomach. “You must be joking!” “You spoiled my shot,” she countered. “Take it again,” he said, looking at her with a mixture of derision, disbelief, and amusement. “No, I can’t shoot with you laughing. And I’ll thank you to wipe that smirk off your face. Lord Marchman is a very nice man.” “He is indeed,” said Ian with an irritating grin. “And it’s a damned good thing you like to shoot, because he sleeps with his guns and fishing poles. You’ll spend the rest of your life slogging through streams and trudging through the woods.” “I happen to like to fish,” she informed him, striving unsuccessfully not to lose her composure. “And Sir Francis may be a trifle older than I, but an elderly husband might be more kind and tolerant than a younger one.” “He’ll have to be tolerant,” Ian said a little shortly, turning his attention back to the guns, “or else a damned good shot.” It angered Elizabeth that he was suddenly attacking her when she had just worked it out in her mind that they were supposed to be dealing with what had happened in a light, sophisticated fashion. “I must say, you aren’t being very mature or very consistent!

Mr. Ravenel, if you are to spend a fortnight here, you will conduct yourself like a gentleman, or I will have you forcibly taken to Alton and tossed onto the first railway car that stops at the station.” West blinked and looked at her, clearly wondering if she was serious. “Those girls are the most important thing in the world to me,” Kathleen said. “I will not allow them to be harmed.” “I have no intention of harming anyone,” West said, offended. “I’m here at the earl’s behest to talk to a set of clodhoppers about their turnip planting. As soon as that’s concluded, I can promise you that I’ll return to London with all possible haste.” Clodhoppers? Kathleen drew in a sharp breath, thinking of the tenant families and the way they worked and persevered and endured the hardships of farming…all to put food on the table of men such as this, who looked down his nose at them. “The families who live here,” she managed to say, “are worthy of your respect. Generations of tenant farmers built this estate--and precious little reward they’ve received in return. Go into their cottages, and see the conditions in which they live, and contrast it with your own circumstances. And then perhaps you might ask yourself if you’re worthy of their respect.” “Good God,” West muttered, “my brother was right. You do have the temperament of a baited badger.” They exchanged glances of mutual loathing and walked away from each other.

Dinner was a family affair. And oh, how she enjoyed it! Who knew there was so much to talk about each day? She loved when the men shared stories about their work in the mines, while she often regaled them with stories about life in the castle when she was a small child or about the types of birds she spotted from the window. And then there were the questions. She found she had many! After staying silent for so long, there was much she longed to know, and she was always interested in learning more about the men and their lives. She wanted to know who had carved the beautiful wooden doorways and furniture around the cottage, and why the deer and the birds seemed to linger at the kitchen window while she prepped meals. "They must adore you, as we do," gushed Bashful. "And I you!" Snow would say. She found she could talk to them till the candle burned out each night. It felt like she was finally waking up and finding her voice after years of silent darkness. And while she promised the men she would not do more than her share of the housework, she couldn't help trying to find small ways to repay them for their kindness when she wasn't busy strategizing. Despite their protests, she prepared a lunch basket for them to take to work each day. She mended tiny socks. And secretly, she was using yarn and needles she had found to knit them blankets for their beds. It might have been summer, but she couldn't help noticing they had few blankets for the winter months.

If the State says to him, “I take your money to pay the gendarme, who saves you the trouble of providing for your own personal safety; for paving the street that you are passing through every day; for paying the magistrate who causes your property and your liberty to be respected; to maintain the soldier who maintains our frontiers,” John Q. Citizen, unless I am much mistaken, will pay for all this without hesitation. But if the State were to say to him, “I take this money that I may give you a little prize in case you cultivate your field well; or that I may teach your son something that you have no wish that he should learn; or that the Minister may add another to his score of dishes at dinner; I take it to build a cottage in Algeria, in which case I must take more money every year to keep an emigrant in it, and another to maintain a soldier to guard this emigrant, and yet more to maintain a general to guard this soldier,” etc., etc., I think I hear poor James exclaim, “This system of law is very much like a system of cheat!” The State foresees the objection, and what does it do? It jumbles all things together, and brings forward just that provoking reason which ought to have nothing whatever to do with the question. It talks of the effect of this money upon labor; it points to the cook and purveyor of the Minister; it shows an emigrant, a soldier, and a general, living upon the money; it shows, in fact, what is seen, and if John Q. Citizen has not learned to take into the account what is not seen, John Q. Citizen will be duped.

The dinosaurs, built of concrete, were a kind of bonus attraction. On New Year’s Eve 1853 a famous dinner for twenty-one prominent scientists was held inside the unfinished iguanodon. Gideon Mantell, the man who had found and identified the iguanodon, was not among them. The person at the head of the table was the greatest star of the young science of palaeontology. His name was Richard Owen and by this time he had already devoted several productive years to making Gideon Mantell’s life hell. A double-tailed lizard, part of the vast collection of natural wonders and anatomical specimens collected by the Scottish-born surgeon John Hunter in the eighteenth century. After Hunter’s death in 1793, the collection passed to the Royal College of Surgeons. (credit 6.8) Owen had grown up in Lancaster, in the north of England, where he had trained as a doctor. He was a born anatomist and so devoted to his studies that he sometimes illicitly borrowed limbs, organs and other parts from corpses and took them home for leisurely dissection. Once, while carrying a sack containing the head of a black African sailor that he had just removed, Owen slipped on a wet cobble and watched in horror as the head bounced away from him down the lane and through the open doorway of a cottage, where it came to rest in the front parlour. What the occupants had to say upon finding an unattached head rolling to a halt at their feet can only be imagined. One assumes that they had not formed any terribly advanced conclusions when, an instant later, a fraught-looking young man rushed in, wordlessly retrieved the head and rushed out again.

I suppose we ought to go back,” she said when several minutes had passed, and his silence became unsettling. In answer Ian tipped his head back and closed his eyes, looking like a man in the throes of some deep, internal battle. “Why?” he said, still in that odd posture. “Because there’s nowhere else to walk,” she answered, stating the obvious. “We did not come out tonight to walk,” he said flatly. Elizabeth’s sense of security began to disintegrate. “We didn’t?” “You know we didn’t.” “Then-then why are we here?” she asked. “Because we wanted to be alone together.” Horrified at the possibility that he’d somehow known what thoughts had been running through her mind at supper, she said uneasily, “Why should you think I want to be alone with you?” He turned his head toward her, and his relentless gaze locked with hers. “Come here and I’ll show you why.” Her entire body began to vibrate with a mixture of shock, desire, and fear, but somehow her mind remained in control. It was one thing to want to be kissed by him at the cottage where the vicar was nearby, but here, with absolute privacy and nothing to prevent him from taking all sorts of liberties, it was another matter entirely. Far more dangerous. More frightening. And based on her behavior in England, she couldn’t even blame him for thinking she’d be willing now. Struggling desperately to ignore the sensual pull he was exerting on her, Elizabeth drew a long, shaky breath. “Mr. Thornton,” she began quietly. “My name is Ian,” he interrupted. “Considering our long acquaintance-not to mention what has transpired between us-don’t you think it’s a little ridiculous to call me Mr. Thornton?” Ignoring his tone, Elizabeth tried to keep hers nonjudgmental and continue her explanation. “I used to blame you entirely for what happened that weekend we were together,” she began softly. “But I’ve come to see things more clearly.” She paused in that valiant speech to swallow and then plunged in again. “The truth is that my actions that first night, when we met in the garden and I asked you to dance with me, were foolish-no, shameless.” Elizabeth stopped, knowing that she could partly exonerate herself by explaining to him that she’d only done all that so her friends wouldn’t lose their wagers, but he would undoubtedly find that degrading and insulting, and she wanted very much to soothe matters between them, not make them much, much worse. And so she said haltingly, “Every other time we were alone together after that I behaved like a shameless wanton. I can’t completely blame you for thinking that’s exactly what I was.” His voice was heavy with irony. “Is that what I thought, Elizabeth?” His deep voice saying her name in the darkness made her senses jolt almost as much as the odd way he was looking at her across the distance that separated them. “Wh-what else could you have thought?” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned fully toward her. “I thought,” he gritted, “you were not only beautiful but intoxicatingly innocent. If I’d believed when we were standing in the garden that you realized what the hell you were asking for when you flirted with a man of my years and reputation, I’d have taken you up on your offer, and we’d both have missed the dancing.” Elizabeth gaped at him. “I don’t believe you.” “What don’t you believe-that I wanted to drag you behind the hedges then and there and make you melt in my arms? Or that I had scruples enough to ignore that ignoble impulse?

You've a perfect right to call me as impractical as a dormouse, and to feel I'm out of touch with life. But this is the point where we simply can't see eye to eye. We've nothing whatever in common. Don't you see. . . it's not an accident that's drawn me from Blake to Whitehead, it's a certain line of thought which is fundamental to my whole approach. You see, there's something about them both. . . They trusted the universe. You say I don't know what the modern world's like, but that's obviously untrue. Anyone who's spent a week in London knows just what it's like. . . if you mean neurosis and boredom and the rest of it. And I do read a modern novel occasionally, in spite of what you say. I've read Joyce and Sartre and Beckett and the rest, and every atom in me rejects what they say. They strike me as liars and fools. I don't think they're dishonest so much as hopelessly tired and defeated." Lewis had lit his pipe. He did it as if Reade were speaking to someone else. Now he said, smiling faintly, "I don't think we're discussing modern literature." Reade had an impulse to call the debater's trick, but he repressed it. Instead he said quietly, "We're discussing modern life, and you brought up the subject. And I'm trying to explain why I don't think that murders and wars prove your point. I'm writing about Whitehead because his fundamental intuition of the universe is the same as my own. I believe like Whitehead that the universe is a single organism that somehow takes account of us. I don't believe that modern man is a stranded fragment of life in an empty universe. I've an instinct that tells me that there's a purpose, and that I can understand that purpose more deeply by trusting my instinct. I can't believe the world is meaningless. I don't expect life to explode in my face at any moment. When I walk back to my cottage, I don't feel like a meaningless fragment of life walking over a lot of dead hills. I feel a part of the landscape, as if it's somehow aware of me, and friendly.

Jack’s eyes glinted with humor. “Do we have to start with that?” “What else would we start with?” “Couldn’t you ask me something like, ‘How did your morning go?’ or ‘What’s your idea of the perfect day?’” “I already know what your idea of the perfect day is.” He arched a brow as if that surprised him. “You do? Let’s hear it.” I was going to say something flip and funny. But as I stared at him, I considered the question seriously. “Hmmn. I think you’d be at a cottage at the beach . . .” “My perfect day includes a woman,” he volunteered. “Okay. There’s a girlfriend. Very low-maintenance.” “I don’t know any low-maintenance women.” “That’s why you like this one so much. And the cottage is rustic, by the way. No cable, no wireless, and you’ve both turned off your cell phones. The two of you take a morning walk along the beach, maybe go for a swim. And you pick up a few pieces of seaglass to put in a jar. Later, you both ride bikes into the town, and you head for the outfitters shop to buy some fishing stuff . . . some kind of bait—” “Flies, not bait,” Jack said, his gaze not moving from mine. “Lefty’s Deceivers.” “For what kind of fish?” “Redfish.” “Great. So then you go fishing—” “The girlfriend, too?” he asked. “No, she stays behind and reads.” “She doesn’t like to fish?” “No, but she thinks it’s fine that you do, and she says it’s healthy for you to have separate interests.” I paused. “She packed a really big sandwich and a couple of beers for you.” “I like this woman.” “You go out in your boat, and you bring home a nice catch and throw it on the grill. You and the woman have dinner. You sit with your feet up, and you talk. Sometimes you stop to listen to the sounds of the tide coming in. After that, the two of you go on the beach with a bottle of wine, and sit on a blanket to watch the sunset.” I finished and looked at him expectantly. “How was that?” I had thought Jack would be amused, but he stared at me with disconcerting seriousness. “Great.” And then he was quiet, staring at me as if he were trying to figure out some sleight-of-hand trick.

need say was I need some time off. But she couldn’t do it. “The St. James house at half-past seven,” she repeated. “Got it, sir.” He rang off. Barbara hung up. She tried to plumb the depths of her feelings, to put a name to what was slowly washing through her veins. She wanted to call it shame. She knew it was liberation. She went to tell her father that they would need to reschedule his doctor’s appointment for another day. Kevin Whateley had not gone to the Royal Plantagenet, which was the pub next door to his cottage. Rather, he had walked along the embankment, past the triangular green where he and Matthew had once learned to operate their pair of remote-control planes, and had instead entered an older pub that stood on a spit of land reaching like a curled finger into the Thames. He’d chosen the Blue Dove deliberately. In the Royal Plantagenet—despite its proximity to his house—he might have forgotten for five minutes or so. But the Blue Dove would not allow him to do so. He sat at a table that overlooked the water. In spite of the night’s falling temperature, someone was out, night fishing from a boat, and lights bobbed periodically with the river’s movement. Kevin watched this, allowing his memory to fill with the image of Matthew running along that same dock, falling, damaging a knee, righting himself but not crying at all, even when the blood began to seep from the cut, even when the stitches were later put in. He was a brave little bloke, always had been. Kevin forced his eyes from the dock and fastened them on the mahogany table. Beer mats covered it, advertising Watney’s, Guinness, and Smith’s. Carefully, Kevin stacked them, restacked them, spread them out like cards, restacked them again. He felt how shallow his breathing was and knew that he needed to take in more air. But to breathe deeply was to lose his grip for an instant. He wouldn’t do that. For if he lost control, he didn’t know how he would get it back. So he did without air. He waited. He didn’t know if the man he sought would come into the pub this late on a Sunday night, mere minutes before closing. In fact, he didn’t even know if the man came here at all any longer. But years ago he’d been a regular customer, when Patsy worked long hours behind the bar, before she’d got her job in a South Kensington hotel. For Matthew’s sake, she had said when she’d taken on the

Marriage meant jointures and pin money and siring an heir to continue the dynasty. A cottage meant just him and Maria. What a fool he was. Even a woman with Maria’s low connections wanted more. And he couldn’t give it. The very thought of attempting it made him ill, because he could never make her happy. He would muck it up, and the legacy of misery would go on. But he’d be damned if he’d watch her throw herself away on that fool Hyatt. She deserved better than an indifferent fiancé who had no clue how to make her eyes darken in passion as she shuddered and trembled and gave her mouth so sweetly… He groaned. He shouldn’t have gone so far with her. It had frightened her. Worse yet, his reaction to it bloody well terrified him-because he’d give a great deal to be able to do it again. He’d never felt that way for any other woman. Freddy was still blathering on, and suddenly a word arrested him. “What was that you said?” Oliver asked. “The beefsteak needed a bit more salt-“ “Before that,” he ground out. “Oh. Right. There was a chap in that club claiming he was your cousin. Mr. Desmond Plumtree, I think.” His stomach sank. When had Desmond gained membership at such a selective club? Did it mean the bastard was finally becoming accepted in society? “Though if you ask me,” Freddy went on, “with family like him, who needs enemies? Insulting fellow. Told me a bunch of nonsense about how you’d killed your father and everybody knew it.” Freddy sniffed. “I told him he was a scurrilous lout, and if he couldn’t see that you were a good sort of chap, then he was as blind as a town crier with a broken lantern. And he didn’t belong in the Blue Swan with all those amiable gents, neither.” For a moment, speech utterly failed Oliver. He could only imagine Desmond’s reaction to that little lecture. “And…er…what did he say?” “He looked surprised, then muttered something about playing cards and trotted off to a card room. Good riddance, too-he was eating up all the macaroons.” Oliver gaped at him, then began to laugh. “What’s so funny?” “You and Maria-don’t you Americans ever pay attention to gossip?” “Well, sure, if it makes sense. But that didn’t make sense. If everybody knew you’d killed your father, you’d have been hanged by now. Since you’re sitting right here, you can’t have done it.” Freddy tapped his forehead. “Simple logic is all.” “Right,” Oliver said. “Simple logic.” A lump caught in his throat. Maria’s defending him was one thing; she was a woman and softhearted, though that had certainly never kept any other woman from gossiping about him. But to have an impressionable pup like Freddy defend him…he didn’t know whether to scoff at the fellow’s naivete or clap him on the shoulder and pronounce him a “good sort of chap” as well.

I leave him there and head for the kitchen, sighing when I see a chair shoved over to the counter, Maddie standing on it, digging through the cabinets. “What do you think you’re doing, little girl?” “Looking for the Lucky Charms,” she says as I pull her down and set her on her feet. “I’m afraid we’re all out.” I grab a box of Cheerios. “How about these?” She makes a face of disgust. “Raisin Bran?” Another face. “How about some cottage cheese?” She pretends to gag. “Uh, well, how about—?” “How about I take you out for breakfast?” Jonathan suggests, stepping into the kitchen. “Pancakes, sausage, eggs…” “Bacon!” Maddie declares. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, you know, with the whole you being you thing.” “Me being me,” he says. “Yeah, chances are you’ll get recognized and then have to explain this whole thing and well, you know, I’m not sure it’s worth it for some breakfast.” “But it might be bacon,” Maddie whines. Jonathan hesitates, thinking it over, glancing between us before he says, “I know somewhere we can go.” Mrs. McKleski’s place. Landing Inn. That’s where he takes us. Maddie and I stand in the woman’s foyer in our pajamas, while Jonathan wears just the leather pants from the Knightmare costume. Mrs. McKleski looks at us like we’ve gone crazy, and I instantly want to be anywhere else in the world, but it’s too late, because Maddie’s been promised some bacon. “You want breakfast,” Mrs. McKleski says. “That’s what you’re telling me?” He nods. “Yes, ma'am.” She stares at him. Hard. I expect a denial, because this whole idea is absurd, but after a moment, she lets out a resigned sigh. “Fine, but go put on some clothes,” she says. “This is an inn, Mr. Cunningham, not Chippendales. I won’t have you at my breakfast table looking like a gigolo.” He cocks an eyebrow at the woman. “Wasn’t aware you knew what a gigolo was.” “Go,” she says pointedly, “before I change my mind.” “Yes, ma’am,” he says, flashing her a smile before turning to me and nodding toward the stairs. “Join me?” I stare at him, not moving. He steps closer. “Please?” “Fine,” I mumble, glancing at Maddie, not wanting to cause a scene. “Hey, sweetheart, why don’t you have a seat in the living room?” “Nonsense,” Mrs. McKleski says. “She can come help me cook. Teach her some responsibility. Not sure her father ever learned any.” Jonathan scowls before again motioning for me to follow him. “And no hanky-panky,” Mrs. McKleski calls to us as we start upstairs. “What’s the hanky-panky?” Maddie asks, following the woman to the kitchen. “She means the hokey-pokey,” I yell down before Mrs. McKleski can answer, because there’s no telling how that woman would explain it. “Oh, I like the hokey-pokey!” Maddie looks at the woman with confusion. “Why don’t you wanna play it?” “Too messy,” Mrs. McKleski grumbles. “All that turning yourself around.” Shaking my head, I go upstairs, stalling right inside the room as Jonathan sorts through his belongings to find some clothes.

During the season, they saw each other and played together almost every day. At the aunt's request, seconded by Professor Valérius, Daaé consented to give the young viscount some violin lessons. In this way, Raoul learned to love the same airs that had charmed Christine's childhood. They also both had the same calm and dreamy little cast of mind. They delighted in stories, in old Breton legends; and their favorite sport was to go and ask for them at the cottage-doors, like beggars: "Ma'am..." or, "Kind gentleman... have you a little story to tell us, please?" And it seldom happened that they did not have one "given" them; for nearly every old Breton grandame has, at least once in her life, seen the "korrigans" dance by moonlight on the heather. But their great treat was, in the twilight, in the great silence of the evening, after the sun had set in the sea, when Daaé came and sat down by them on the roadside and in a low voice, as though fearing lest he should frighten the ghosts whom he loved, told them the legends of the land of the North. And, the moment he stopped, the children would ask for more. There was one story that began: "A king sat in a little boat on one of those deep still lakes that open like a bright eye in the midst of the Norwegian mountains..." And another: "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her little red shoes and her fiddle, but most of all loved, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music." While the old man told this story, Raoul looked at Christine's blue eyes and golden hair; and Christine thought that Lotte was very lucky to hear the Angel of Music when she went to sleep. The Angel of Music played a part in all Daddy Daaé's tales; and he maintained that every great musician, every great artist received a visit from the Angel at least once in his life. Sometimes the Angel leans over their cradle, as happened to Lotte, and that is how their are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than fifty, which, you must admit, is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And, sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a bad heart or a bad conscience. No one ever sees the Angel; but he is heard by those who are meant to hear him. He often comes when they least expect him, when they are sad or disheartened. Then their ears suddenly perceive celestial harmonies, a divine voice, which they remember all their lives. Persons who are visited by the Angel quiver with a thrill unknown to the rest of mankind. And they can not touch an instrument, or open their mouths to sing, without producing sounds that put all other human sounds to shame. Then people who do not know that the Angel has visited those persons say that they have genius. Little Christine asked her father if he had heard the Angel of Music. But Daddy Daaé shook his head sadly; and then his eyes lit up, as he said: "You will hear him one day, my child! When I am in Heaven, I will send him to you!" Daddy was beginning to cough at that time.

When a little of his strength returned he moved onto his side, taking her with him, still a part of her. Her hair spilled over his naked chest like a rumpled satin waterfall, and he lifted a shaking hand to smooth it off her face, feeling humbled and blessed by her sweetness and unselfish ardor. Several minutes later Elizabeth stirred in his arms, and he tipped her chin up so that he could gaze into her eyes. “Have I ever told you that you are magnificent? She started to shake her head, then suddenly remembered that he had told her she was magnificent once before, and the recollection brought poignant tears to her eyes. “You did say that to me,” she amended, brushing her fingers over his smooth shoulder because she couldn’t seem to stop touching him. “You told me that when we were together-“ “In the woodcutter’s cottage,” he finished for her, recalling the occasion as well. In reply she had chided him for acting as if he also thought Charise Dumont was magnificent, Ian remembered, regretting all the time they had lost since then…the days and nights she could have been in his arms as she was now. “Do you know how I spent the rest of the afternoon after you left the cottage?” he asked softly. When she shook her head, he said with a wry smile, “I spent it pleasurably contemplating tonight. At the time, of course, I didn’t realize tonight was years away.” He paused to draw the sheet up over her back so she wouldn’t be chilled, then he continued in the same quiet voice, “I wanted you so badly that day that I actually ached while I watched you fasten that shirt you were wearing. Although,” he added dryly, “that particular condition, brought on by that particular cause, has become my normal state for the last four weeks, so I’m quite used to it now. I wonder if I’ll miss it,” he teased. “What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, realizing that he was perfectly serious despite his light tone. “The agony of unfulfilled desire,” he explained, brushing a kiss on her forehead, “brought on by wanting you.” “Wanting me?” she burst out, rearing up so abruptly that she nearly overturned him as she leaned up on an elbow, absently clutching the sheet to her breasts. “Is this-what we’ve just done, I mean-“ “The Scots think of it as making love,” he interrupted gently. “Unlike most English,” he added with flat scorn, “who prefer to regard it as ‘performing one’s marital duty.’” “Yes,” Elizabeth said absently, her mind on his earlier remark about wanting her until it caused him physical pain, “but is this what you meant all those times you’ve said you wanted me?” His sensual lips quirked in a half smile. “Yes.” A rosy blush stained her smooth cheeks, and despite her effort to sound severe, her eyes were lit with laughter. “And the day we bargained about the betrothal, and you told me I had something you wanted very badly, what you wanted to do with me…was this?” “Among other things,” he agreed, tenderly brushing his knuckles over her flushed cheek. “If I had known all this,” she said with a rueful smile, “I’m certain I would have asked for additional concessions.” That startled him-the thought that she would have tried to drive a harder bargain if she’d realized exactly how much and what sort of power she really held. “What kind of additional concessions?” he asked, his face carefully expressionless. She put her cheek against his shoulder, her arms curving around him. “A shorter betrothal,” she whispered. “A shorter courtship, and a shorter ceremony.

Not liking to think of him so, and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if the children were laughing at that, she twitched the stockings out, and all the fine gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips and forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet. It didn't matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book, fame—who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his way with him, his truthfulness—for instance at dinner she had been thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she had felt in the hall when the others were talking, There is something I want—something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly rose those words they had said at dinner, "the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee," began washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed; so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book. And all the lives we ever lived And all the lives to be, Are full of trees and changing leaves, she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she opened the book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so, she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way up under petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all. Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners she read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, from one red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her—her husband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don't interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don't say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn't exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn't matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it—if not he, then another. This man's strength and sanity, his feeling for straight forward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit's cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face, he let them fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and English novels and Scott's hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie's drowning and Mucklebackit's sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.

In my youth . . . my sacred youth . . . in eaves sole sparowe sat not more alone than I . . . in my youth, my saucer-deep youth, when I possessed a mirror and both a morning and an evening comb . . . in my youth, my pimpled, shame-faced, sugared youth, when I dreamed myself a fornicator and a poet; when life seemed to be ahead somewhere like a land o’ lakes vacation cottage, and I was pure tumescence, all seed, afloat like fuzz among the butterflies and bees; when I was the bursting pod of a fall weed; when I was the hum of sperm in the autumn air, the blue of it like watered silk, vellum to which I came in a soft cloud; O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, I sang then, knowing naught, clinging to the tall slim wheatweed which lay in a purple haze along the highway like a cotton star . . . in my fumbling, lubricious, my uticated youth, when a full bosom and a fine round line of Keats, Hart Crane, or Yeats produced in me the same effect—a moan throughout my molecules—in my limeade time, my uncorked innocence, my jellybelly days, when I repeated Olio de Oliva like a tenor; then I would touch the page in wonder as though it were a woman, as though I were blind in my bed, in the black backseat, behind the dark barn, the dim weekend tent, last dance, date's door, reaching the knee by the second feature, possibly the thigh, my finger an urgent emissary from my penis, alas as far away as Peking or Bangkok, so I took my heart in my hand, O my love, O my love, I sighed, O Christina, Italian rose; my inflated flesh yearning to press against that flesh becoming Word—a word—words which were wet and warm and responsive as a roaming tongue; and her hair was red, long, in ringlets, kiss me, love me up, she said in my anxious oral ear; I read: Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour; for I had oodles of needs, if England didn't; I was nothing but skin, pulp, and pit, in my grapevine time, during the hard-on priesthood of the poet; because then—in my unclean, foreskinned, and prurient youth—I devoutly believed in Later Life, in Passion, in Poetry, the way I thought only fools felt about God, prayer, heaven, foreknowledge, sin; for what was a poem if not a divine petition, a holy plea, a prophecy: [...] a stranger among strangers, myself the strangest because I could never bring myself to enter adolescence, but kept it about like a bit of lunch you think you may eat later, and later come upon at the bottom of a bag, dry as dust, at the back of the refrigerator, bearded with mold, or caked like sperm in the sock you've fucked, so that gingerly, then, you throw the mess out, averting your eyes, just as Rainer complained he never had a childhood—what luck!—never to have suffered birthpang, nightfear, cradlecap, lake in your lung; never to have practiced scales or sat numb before the dentist's hum or picked your mother up from the floor she's bled and wept and puked on; never to have been invaded by a tick, sucked by a leech, bitten by a spider, stung by a bee, slimed on by a slug, seared by a hot pan, or by paper or acquaintance cut, by father cuffed; never to have been lost in a crowd or store or parking lot or left by a lover without a word or arrogantly lied to or outrageously betrayed—really what luck!—never to have had a nickel roll with slow deliberation down a grate, a balloon burst, toy break; never to have skinned a knee, bruised a friendship, broken trust; never to have had to conjugate, keep quiet, tidy, bathe; to have lost the chance to be hollered at, bullied, beat up (being nothing, indeed, to have no death), and not to have had an earache, life's lessons to learn, or sums to add reluctantly right up to their bitter miscalculated end—what sublime good fortune, the Greek poet suggested—because Nature is not accustomed to life yet; it is too new, too incidental, this shiver in the stone, never altogether, and would just as soon (as Culp prefers to say) cancer it; erase, strike, stamp it out— [...]

………………………………………….. Taylor was keenly aware of his vulnerability as he entered the cottage. He had no weapons, no friends, and no idea why he was there. If they wanted his head, it was theirs, and there was little he could do about it. And yet, he did not feel unsafe. He felt kept. Inside was a small, dimly lit room with just four or five candles planted here and there around it, including one in a long silver holder that stood atop a small, elegantly carved table in the center. Before the table was a stool, also beautifully carved, with another, similar one opposite. There was a stool in the corner as well, and two more next to a hardwood desk on the right. The walls were rough with the texture of the clay, and looked peach in the candlelight. There were arched doorways leading off to unlit corridors, and one large doorway behind the table, covered by a red velvet curtain. If it was going to be a sneak attack, Taylor would be an easy target. “Sit here,” the stout man said, motioning to the stool before the table. “And wait.” He did so, and the stout man walked off through the velvet curtain with his staff. A moment later Taylor could hear mutterings between him and another, but he could not make out what they were saying. For a few seconds there was silence, and Taylor became suddenly worried. Then, to his relief, the stout man reemerged and took his seat in the corner, his eyes set on the room from whence he had just come. Taylor, too, set his eyes on the curtain, unsure whether there would emerge a man or a wild beast, but curious nonetheless. His curiosity was answered when the

They were such a sweet and gentle couple. “Can we make you a cup of tea?” Nothing that you think about “junkies.” It was all very civilized. Sometimes I’d go to the cottage and—because they were mainliners—say, “Penny, is Steve still alive?” “I think so, darling. Anyway, have a cup of tea and then we’ll wake him up.

The living room had some glare, but not nearly as bad as in the other room. Reese and James both asked if they could turn the basement into a playroom instead of using the room upstairs again. Hudson agreed that it would be a better use of the large space, too. Given everything her children had gone through, Bethany agreed to transform the rooms. When they were ready to go, Bethany felt it was necessary to stop and thank Peter again. While things still didn’t make complete sense to her, she was beyond thankful for his generosity. She stopped to see Carol to give her the unused ingredients from the cottage. They were thrilled to take the leftover ingredients since they lived at the shore year-round. When it was time to say goodbye, Bethany and Carol hugged as tears started to form in both of their eyes. They got into the car, shut the doors, and started the car. “Are you ready for the new school year?” She looked behind her as she reversed out of the driveway. It would be late when they arrived home, but they still had a few days before school started. “I suppose so,” Hudson frowned. “What are we going to do without Dad? Who will come in for Careers with Dad day?” Bethany sunk into her seat as she turned the air conditioner on; it was hot today. “Sweetie, we can worry about that when the day comes. We will figure it out, I promise.” “You’re the best, mom,” Hudson

she was carefully putting the Monte Carlos onto a pretty plate decorated with violets. ‘Do you think Joe and Rachel might become an item?’ Clara asked, as she pulled out Tassie’s cups and saucers. ‘Oh, I can’t say yet,’ said Tassie vaguely. ‘Could be. I saw a little heart in my cup this morning.’ ‘Perhaps we should seek out a Wise Woman in Chippenham and see if we can’t make a spell for them to fall in love,’ said Clara with a cheeky smile at Tassie. ‘Oh no, dear, you can never do a love spell for someone else, because it comes back to you.’ Clara wasn’t sure if Tassie was serious. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘If we do a love spell for Joe to fall in love with Rachel, then he might fall in love with us, and the last thing I need is a man hanging about my garden with a hangdog face. I have already had a litter of rescue dogs in my lifetime to care for.’ Clara laughed. ‘I love that! Well, if he fell for you, it would be because you’re amazing and you are the

Apparently unaware of the hypnotizing effect he had on the opposite sex, her Adonis was still looking quizzically at her. "You're standing in front of the cookies," she managed to say. "Oh," he responded. She had almost convinced herself to ignore him because he was obviously just a monosyllabic jock when he smiled, and she was forced to clutch her shopping cart tighter to keep from

was looking at her differently. She brushed it aside. One of her imaginings, Mom would say. Her crazy hunches about people. "Really?" he asked casually. "Isn't the lighthouse automated now?" "I'm not running it. I'm doing some photography for the

Have you got a hot toddy in that cottage of yours?” “No, I haven’t and I’d say you don’t need one,” retorted Hoggett. “You’re a rotten runner anyway. You can have a cup of tea and get dry while you’re explaining why I shouldn’t get you certified.

The thing is, he liked to go into a deep reverie, liked to daydream ... not the sort of daydream like he was remembering a woman from his past or something, but say we were in that pine forest of ours, he'd suddenly get this dreamy look and drop into a squat and rest his chin in his hand and his elbow on his knee, and he could squat there like a Bedouin for a whole hour, eyes closed, smiling, intently focused on what he was seeing there in his mind s eye... And I absolutely hated this, I thought my husband was a nitwit. And out of the blue I shouted and startled him and he went pale and couldn't utter a word, as if woken from a trance .. And I said, If you'd rather do something useful, then the doorsill needs fixing, there's a draft, and mice will get into the cottage... And leaning against a tree, or down in his squat position, my husband looked at me and I saw that the arrow had hit its mark, that he despised me... I have nowhere else left to run, he said sadly, voice breaking..

We’d never again share a horsey-smelling cottage while learning to fly. Who shall separate us? Life, that’s who. I’d had the same feeling when Pa got married, the same presentiment, and hadn’t it come true? In the Camilla era, as I’d predicted, I saw him less and less. Weddings were joyous occasions, sure, but they were also low-key funerals, because after saying their vows people tended to disappear. It occurred to me then that identity is a hierarchy. We are primarily one thing, and then we’re primarily another, and then another, and so on, until death—in succession. Each new identity assumes the throne of Self, but takes us further from our original self, perhaps our core self—the child. Yes, evolution, maturation, the path towards wisdom, it’s all natural and healthy, but there’s a purity to childhood, which is diluted with each iteration. As with that hunk of gold, it gets whittled away.

wanted. There was a long wait. Then she heard the buzzing noise – brr – brr – brr – that told her that the telephone bell at Kirrin Cottage was ringing. She began to plan what she should say to her father. She must, she really must go home with Timmy. She didn’t know how she was going to explain about Timmy – perhaps she needn’t explain at all. But she meant to go home that day or the next! ‘Brr – brr – brr – brr,’ said the bell at the other end. It went on and on, and nobody answered it. She did not hear her father’s

say

Why are you doing it to me?—she cried soundlessly to the darkness around her. Because you’re good—some enormous laughter seemed to be answering from the roof tops and from the sewers. Then I won’t want to be good any longer—But you will—I don’t have to—You will—I can’t bear it—You will. She shuddered and walked faster—but ahead of her, in the foggy distance, she saw the calendar above the roofs of the city—it was long past midnight and the calendar said: August 6, but it seemed to her suddenly that she saw September 2 written above the city in letters of blood—and she thought: If she worked, if she struggled, if she rose, she would take a harder beating with each step of her climb, until, at the end, whatever she reached, be it a copper company or an unmortgaged cottage, she would see it seized by Jim on some September 2 and she would see it vanish to pay for the parties where Jim made his deals with his friends. Then I won’t!—she screamed and whirled around and went running back along the street—but it seemed to her that in the black sky, grinning at her from the steam of the laundry, there weaved an enormous figure that would hold no shape, but its grin remained the same on its changing faces, and its face was Jim’s and her childhood preacher’s and the woman social worker’s from the personnel department of the five-and-ten—and the grin seemed to say to her: People like you will always stay honest, people like you will always struggle to rise, people like you will always work, so we’re safe and you have no choice. She

This rabbi," said Merlyn, "went on a journey with the prophet They walked all day, and at nightfall they came to the sumble cotage of a poor man, whose only treasure was a cow. The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straitened circumstances. Elijah and the Rabbi were entertained with plenty of the cow's milk, sustained by home-made bread and butter, and they were put to sleep in the best bed while their kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire. But in the morning the poor man's cow was dead." "Go on." "They walked all the next day, and came that evening to the house of a very wealthy merchant, whose hospitality they craved. The merchant was cold and proud and rich, and all that he would do for the prophet and his companion was to lodge them in a cowshed and feed them on bread and water. In the morning, however, Elijah thanked him very much for what he had done, and sent for a mason to repair one of his walls, which happened to be falling down, as a return for his kindness. "The Rabbi Jachanan, unable to keep silence any longer, begged the holy man to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings. "In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,' replied the prophet, 'it was decreed that his wife was to die that night, but in reward for his goodness God took the cow instead of the wife. I repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was concealed near the place, and if the miser had repaired the wall himself he would have discovered the treasure. Say not therefore to the Lord: What doest thou? But say in thy heart: Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?'" "It is a nice sort of story," said the Wart, because it seemed to be over.

You’re a human. We all fall down sometimes. It’s what we do afterward that matters.” He gestured to the thinning crowd in the room. “And I’d say you’re making a strong effort to get back up.

I love ice cream. Sour cream. Cheese. All kinds of cheese, even cottage cheese, which Jeremy says tastes like sadness.