Old Mole: Being the Surprising Adventures in England of Herbert Jocelyn Beenham, M.A., Sometime Sixth-Form Master at Thrigsby Grammar School in the County of LancasterCannan, Gilbert
General
Old Mole: Being the Surprising Adventures in England of Herbert Jocelyn Beenham, M.A., Sometime Sixth-Form Master at Thrigsby Grammar School in the County of Lancaster
Cannan, Gilbert
England -- Fiction; Husband and wife -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Theater -- Fiction
Bertha's address was 33 June Street. It was a long journey by tram,
and then Matilda and her husband had to walk nearly a mile down a
monotonous road intersected with little streets. The name of the road
was Pretoria Avenue, and on one side the little streets were called
after the months of the year, and on the other after the twelve
Apostles. The Boothroyds therefore lived in the very heart of the
product of the end of the nineteenth century. Their front door opened
straight on to the street, they had a little yard at the back, and
their house consisted of eight rooms. The parlor door was unlocked for
the visit, and, amid photographs of many Boothroyds, testimonials to
the worthiness of James Boothroyd and his Oddfellows' certificate, tea
was laid, none of your proper Yorkshire teas, but afternoon tea with
thin bread and butter. Five little Boothroyds in clean collars and
pinafores were placed round the room, and stared alternately at the
cake on the table and their aunt and their new uncle. Old Mole
endeavored to avoid their gaze, but the room seemed full of round
staring gray eyes, and when he considered the corpulent American organ
that took up the whole wall opposite the fireplace, he was astonished
that so many people could be crammed into so small a space. Then he
estimated that there were at least sixty other exactly similar houses
in the street, that from January to December there were streets in
replica, not to mention those on the other side of the road which were
named from John to--surely not to Judas? He remembered then that one
street was called Paul Street. . . . Dozens and dozens of houses, each
with its Boothroyd family and its American organ. Dejectedly he told
himself that these were the poor, until, glancing across at Matilda,
he remembered that it was from such a house, among dozens of such
houses, that she had come. That thought colored his survey, and he
reminded himself, as nearly always he was forced to do when
considering her actions or any episode in her history, that his own
comfortable middle-class standards were not at all proper to the
consideration of the phenomena of mean streets. Desperately anxious to
make himself pleasant to Matilda's sister, he asked heavily:
"Are these all----?"
She was in such a flutter that she did not leave him time to finish
his sentence, took him to be referring to the children, and said:
"Yes, they were all hers, and there were two more in the kitchen."
With more tact Matilda cut the cake and gave a piece to each of the
five children. Mrs. Boothroyd said she was spoiling them, and Matilda
retorted:
"If they're good children you can't spoil them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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