It is not often that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer months.Narrator
He has no future to speak of. He owns an imperfectly self-supporting paper called the Mammoth Trumpet, and one of our duties, we have discovered, is to travel the country in search of subscribers.Narrator
You can see the place as you pass in the train. All old, sleepy, peaceful red roofs and green trees, with a church sitting in their midst looking as if it had been there for ever and meant to stay there till the finish.Narrator
Home without Plum, as we called him, was a dreary place, and the prospect of his barren absence for a matter of three months or so was enough to depress anyone.Narrator
All thoughts of Morpheus vanished from my mind, to make room for a sudden spasm of the most acute alarm and desolation. It was as though someone had informed me that I had just swallowed a pint of poison by mistake.Narrator
I give you my word that, until that moment, it had never begun to dawn on me that such was my position. I was so wrapped up in Plum that I hadn't time to think of myself. I took it for granted that I was as free as air.Narrator
The words were hardly out of my mouth when I wanted to recall them, to blot them out, to hush them up. Too late! I had killed the conversation.Narrator
The Family consists of many members, widely differing in age, appearance and disposition, but all alike in one respect: each possesses what seems to the lay eye the brain of a mussel.Narrator
If there is one thing that gives me the pip, it is to have to look after a lot of people who won't look after themselves.Narrator
But what could I do! It was one of those things which have got to be done, and there you are!Narrator
However eagerly other men may yearn for fame, my desire is to go through life without being noticed. A quiet life, with a goodly supply of cigars and something to smoke them in—that's my idea.Narrator