“They monks seem different to the ordinary sort,” said Maggie that night, when, after much fomentation of the injured ankle, her aunt tucked her into bed.
“They’re just harmless haverals,” said her aunt indulgently; but Maggie “added a wee thing” onto her prayers, and whispered under the bed-clothes:
“Please make room for yon clean man at—any—rate.”
COMRADES
He was called Bunchy because, when a very little boy, his clothes would bunch; the tiny petticoats were short for their width, and everything stuck out all round him like a frill.
Now that he was five, and wore breeches with four little buttons at the knee, the name still stuck to him, though it was no longer appropriate.
Bunchy was lonely.
If Pussy had been there it would have been very different; but she had been sent for quite suddenly to go and nurse dad, who had incontinently fallen ill with influenza just three days after mother (Bunchy always called her Pussy), Nana, and he had settled down for a fortnight’s holiday in a Cotteswold village.
It was a delightful village! It had a green with noisy geese upon it, a stream that gurgled and splashed and told fairy tales on sleepy September afternoons, and real woods surrounded it.