Bliss, and Other Stories by Katherine Mansfield LONDON: CONSTABLE & COMPANY LIMITED _Published_ 1920 _Reprinted_ 1920 _Reprinted_ 1921 _Reprinted_ 1921 _Reprinted_ 1921 _Reprinted_ 1922 _Reprinted_ 1922 _Reprinted_ 1923 _Reprinted_ 1924 _Reprinted_ 1925 Printed in Great Britain at _The Mayflower Press, Plymouth._ William Brendon & Son, Ltd. “. . . _but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower, safety._” TO JOHN MIDDLETON MURRY Contents Prelude Je ne Parle pas Français Bliss The Wind Blows Psychology Pictures The Man without a Temperament Mr. Reginald Peacock’s Day Sun and Moon Feuille d’Album A Dill Pickle The Little Governess Revelations The Escape Prelude 1 There was not an inch of room for Lottie and Kezia in the buggy. When Pat swung them on top of the luggage they wobbled; the grandmother’s lap was full and Linda Burnell could not possibly have held a lump of a child on hers for any distance. Isabel, very superior, was perched beside the new handy-man on the driver’s seat. Hold-alls, bags and boxes were piled upon the floor. “These are absolute necessities that I will not let out of my sight for one instant,” said Linda Burnell, her voice trembling with fatigue and excitement. Lottie and Kezia stood on the patch of lawn just inside the gate all ready for the fray in their coats with brass anchor buttons and little round caps with battleship ribbons. Hand in hand, they stared with round solemn eyes first at the absolute necessities and then at their mother. “We shall simply have to leave them. That is all. We shall simply have to cast them off,” said Linda Burnell. A strange little laugh flew from her lips; she leaned back against the buttoned leather cushions and shut her eyes, her lips trembling with laughter. Happily at that moment Mrs. Samuel Josephs, who had been watching the scene from behind her drawing-room blind, waddled down the garden path. “Why nod leave the chudren with be for the afterdoon, Brs. Burnell? They could go on the dray with the storeban when he comes in the eveding. Those thigs on the path have to go, dod’t they?” “Yes, everything outside the house is supposed to go,” said Linda Burnell, and she waved a white hand at the tables and chairs standing on their heads on the front lawn. How absurd they looked! Either they ought to be the other way up, or Lottie and Kezia ought to stand on their heads, too. And she longed to say: “Stand on your heads, children, and wait for the store-man.” It seemed to her that would be so exquisitely funny that she could not attend to Mrs. Samuel Josephs. The fat creaking body leaned across the gate, and the big jelly of a face smiled. “Dod’t you worry, Brs. Burnell. Loddie and Kezia can have tea with by chudren in the dursery, and I’ll see theb on the dray afterwards.”