The British Barbarians
THE BRITISH BARBARIANS I The time was Saturday afternoon; the place was Surrey; the person of the drama was Philip Christy. He had come down by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the world knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our southern suburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that town of villas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, the first full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse- chestnut, and guelder-rose. The air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philip paused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, admiring it silently. He was glad he lived there-- so very aristocratic! What joy to glide direct, on the enchanted carpet of the South-Eastern Railway, from the gloom and din and
if I'm good."
There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting
in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully
that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on
the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence
vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.
If anybody had asked Amy what the greatest trial of her
life was, she would have answered at once, "My nose." When
she was a baby, Jo had accidently dropped her into the coal hod,
and Amy insisted that the fall had ruined her nose forever. It
was not big nor red, like poor 'Petrea's', it was only rather
flat, and all the pinching in the world could not give it an
aristocratic point. No one minded it but herself, and it was
doing its best to grow, but Amy felt deeply the want of a
Grecian nose, and drew whole sheets of handsome ones to console
herself.
"Little Raphael," as her sisters called her, had a decided
talent for drawing, and was never so happy as when copying
flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer
specimens of art. Her teachers complained that instead of
doing her sums she covered her slate with animals, the blank
pages of her atlas were used to copy maps on, and caricatures
of the most ludicrous description came fluttering out of all
THE BRITISH BARBARIANS I The time was Saturday afternoon; the place was Surrey; the person of the drama was Philip Christy. He had come down by the early fast train to Brackenhurst. All the world knows Brackenhurst, of course, the greenest and leafiest of our southern suburbs. It looked even prettier than its wont just then, that town of villas, in the first fresh tenderness of its wan spring foliage, the first full flush of lilac, laburnum, horse- chestnut, and guelder-rose. The air was heavy with the odour of May and the hum of bees. Philip paused a while at the corner, by the ivied cottage, admiring it silently. He was glad he lived there-- so very aristocratic! What joy to glide direct, on the enchanted carpet of the South-Eastern Railway, from the gloom and din and