I Love Evensong. There's Something Sad And

There Are No Sick People In North Oxford. They Are Either Dead Or Alive. It's Sometimes Difficult To Tell The Difference, That's All.

Perhaps I Need Some Shattering Experience To Awaken And Inspire Me, Or At Least To Give Me Some Emotion To Recollect In Tranquility. But How To Get It? Sit Here And Wait For It Or Go Out And Seek It? . . . I Expect It Will Be Sit And Wait.

Perhaps There Can Be Too Much Making Of Cups Of Tea, I Thought, As I Watched Miss Statham Filling The Heavy Teapot. Did We Really Need A Cup Of Tea? I Even Said As Much To Miss Statham And She Looked At Me With A Hurt, Almost Angry Look, 'do We Need Tea? She Echoed. 'but Miss Lathbury...' She Sounded Puzzled And Distressed And I Began To Realise That My Question Had Struck At Something Deep And Fundamental. It Was The Kind Of Question That Starts A Landslide In The Mind. I Mumbled Something About Making A Joke And That Of Course One Needed Tea Always, At Every Hour Of The Day Or Night.

[the Woman] Paused And Seemed To Take A Deep Breath. 'you See,' She Declared. 'i Am Tom Mallow's Aunt.' Catherine's First Instinct Was To Burst Out Laughing. She Wondered Why There Was Something Slightly Absurd About Aunts; Perhaps It Was Because One Thought Of Them As Dear, Comfortable Creatures, Somehow Lacking In Dignity And Prestige.

I Stretched Out My Hand Towards The Little Bookshelf Where I Kept Cookery And Devotional Books, The Most Comfortable Bedside Reading.