Problems for the PiggottsMISS WATSON came home from hospital on a Saturday, which meant that Agnes Fogerty could collect her in the taxi, as arranged, and see her settled at the schoolhouse. Apart from looking pale and rather shaken, Dorothy Watson had come through her ordeal very well. She leant...
Perhaps they were already dressed? She put her warm feet upon the chilly linoleum and went to the door. The house felt icy.Sure enough, the two little girls were scampering about the long passage half-dressed. They greeted her with cries of joy, and bounced into her room unbidden. Wails from Robi...
Miss Watson's children were attempting two carols played by the few who had recorders. The noise produced was excruciating, and Dorothy sometimes had difficulty in distinguishing 'Hark, The Herald Angels Sing' from 'O Come All Ye Faithful'. At times, she despaired. Perhaps straightforward singing...
The experience had opened my eyes to a larger, more beautiful world, to an ancient culture happier than our own, and had given me a glimpse of 'the glory that was Greece.'I felt wonderfully refreshed, and my arm and ankle were so much better that I discarded my sling whenever possible. Prudence, ...
PonderingsTHE EXPECTED rush of invitations to join this and that quickened its pace during early September, and I was asked to bestow my time and ability upon diverse activities, from arranging the flowers in Beech Green church to judging the entries of those local Brownies who were aspiring to a...
Christmas and AfterDECEMBER had hardly begun before all the frenzy of Christmas began to break out. At the village school the windows were dotted with blobs of cotton wool representing snow flakes; paper chains hung across the class rooms and frequently collapsed upon the children beneath, much t...
Mr Willet was my informant, punctuating his account with so many guffaws that I found myself roaring with laughter, long before the point of the story had been told me.It appears that Jim Waites had been missing chicken food from his store at the end of the garden at Tyler's Row, on several occas...
Jenny DecidesWINNIE Bailey awaited Jenny's arrival eagerly, but with a certain amount of anxiety. Had she received her message about Percy? How would Percy greet her? Would she have come to any firm decisions about her future whilst at Torquay? The train was due at Lulling Station soon after four...
Oliver GoldsmithThe last few days of April had been bright but cold, but on the morning of May Day the skies were dark and the wind boisterous.It was as well, thought Joan Young, gazing from her bedroom window as she dressed, that Mrs Curdle's May fair was not obliged to perform in such inhospita...
Her mood was more militant than usual. 'That new doctor I saw this time said I was to lose two stone and take more exercise. "More exercise, young man," I says to him, "if you saw how much exercise I have to take, day in day out, at my work - which is Real Work, I'll have you know, not just looki...
At "The Drovers' Arms"MOLLY PIGGOTT sang as she washed up the glasses in the back kitchen of "The Drovers' Arms." She was alone in the house, for as soon as the bar had shut at two o'clock, Ted Allen, the landlord, and his wife Bessie had driven off to Lulling, in their twenty-year-old Baby Austi...
Several stalwart chapel-goers, whose parents and friends lay peacefully beneath the tussocky grass of the graveyard, were among the first to put their names on the list of objectors to the scheme. Percy Hodge's name, of course, was there, in company with Mrs Cleary's.'I've been tending the graves...
Jingle BellsMR Willet was as good as his word, and next morning, 'bright and early,' I had my breakfast to the accompaniment of the brushing up of coke in the distance. He was still at it when I crossed to the school, wielding the broom vigorously in his capable hands, his breath wreathing his he...
Where was his comfortable feather pillow, familiarly sour-smelling and crumpled? Where was the sides-to-middled sheet, soft with age? And worse still, where was the cane-bottomed chair beside the bed, with the glass for his teeth and his tin of extra strong peppermints?Everything was wrong. The l...
Sergeant Burnaby Falls IllFOR some days after the departure of Mrs Fowler's dog, peace reigned at Tyler's Row. Sergeant Burnaby maintained an offended silence when his path crossed the Hales'. Even his radio seemed quieter, although his cough, Diana noticed, became more hacking daily. She wished ...
Hard WeatherFEBRUARY CAME in with the same dismal clammy weather which had held sway throughout January. But after the first week, the weathervanes spun round to the north-east, and a vicious wind tossed the bare branches of the chestnut trees on Thrush Green. It was during this bleak spell that ...
The Jumble SaleFOR the past week, posters announcing the jumble sale to be held in the schoolroom in aid of the Church Roof Fund had fluttered from the wall by the bus stop, the grocer's window, and from a hook in the butcher's shop.At the end of afternoon school, Miss Gray and I pushed back the ...
Albert Makes A JourneyALBERT PIGGOTT arrived at Victoria Coach Station later in the morning, and his first port of call was a café. Breakfast time seemed a long way behind him. He sat at a table and waited for someone to serve him.He was not a lover of London. True, he had only visited the capita...
What Shall We Give Them?THE news of Agnes and Dorothy's retirement created a great deal of activity among such bodies as the Parent-Teacher association, St Andrew's church where the two ladies worshipped, the local Women's Institute, as well as individual friends. Respect and affection for the tw...
Kind Alice Willet had offered to sit-in with young Joseph, and arrived laden with enough knitting to keep her hands occupied for three weeks, let alone three hours. I went off with an easy conscience.Amy was unusually subdued, I thought, as we drove to Caxley.'I've had a slight headache for the l...
The Gamekeeper's CottageWHILE Hilary Jackson sat in Mrs Chard's cool green and white drawing-room sipping a glass of lemon squash and listening to her hostess's ecstatic comments as she unpacked the parcel of jumble, the vicar of Fairacre was talking to Mr Mawne.The two men lay back in deck chair...
The children squelched into school from muddy lanes and the puddle-filled playground, incurring the wrath of Mrs Pringle daily. Scaffolding was beginning to shroud the stumpy spire of St Patrick's and the damaged area of the nave, and the Appeal Fund board made a new feature in the village. So fa...