LIMBO BY THE SAME AUTHOR LEDA; AND OTHER POEMS LIMBO BY ALDOUS HUXLEY LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1920 _All rights reserved_ CONTENTS PAGE FARCICAL HISTORY OF RICHARD GREENOW 1 HAPPILY EVER AFTER 116 EUPOMPUS GAVE SPLENDOUR TO ART BY NUMBERS 192 HAPPY FAMILIES 211 CYNTHIA 245 THE BOOKSHOP 259 THE DEATH OF LULLY 269 LIMBO FARCICAL HISTORY OF RICHARD GREENOW I THE most sumptuous present that Millicent received on her seventh birthday was a doll's house. "With love to darling little Mill from Aunty Loo." Aunt Loo was immensely rich, and the doll's house was almost as grandiose and massive as herself. It was divided into four rooms, each papered in a different colour and each furnished as was fitting: beds and washstands and wardrobes in the upstair rooms, arm-chairs and artificial plants below. "Replete with every modern convenience; sumptuous appointments." There was even a cold collation ready spread on the dining-room table--two scarlet lobsters on a dish, and a ham that had been sliced into just enough to reveal an internal complexion of the loveliest pink and white. One might go on talking about the doll's house for ever, it was so beautiful. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of Millicent's brother Dick. He would spend hours opening and shutting the front door, peeping through the windows, arranging and rearranging the furniture. As for Millicent, the gorgeous present left her cold. She had been hoping--and, what is more, praying, fervently, every night for a month--that Aunty Loo would give her a toy sewing-machine (one of the kind that works, though) for her birthday. She was bitterly disappointed when the doll's house came instead. But she bore it all stoically and managed to be wonderfully polite to Aunty Loo about the whole affair. She never looked at the doll's house: it simply didn't interest her.