Some Tame Gazelle

But surely liking the same things for dinner is one of the deepest and most lasting things you could possibly have in common with anyone,' argued Dr. Parnell. 'After all, the emotions of the heart are very transitory, or so I believe; I should think it makes one much happier to be well-fed than well-loved.

Also, it was the morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon.

If only one could clear out one's mind and heart as ruthlessly as one did one's wardrobe.

Yes, I love September,’ agreed Belinda, guilty at having let her thoughts wander from her guest. ‘Michaelmas daisies and blackberries and comforting things like fires in the evening again and knitting.

Would you like another cup, Miss Bede?’ asked Miss Prior. ‘I know you’re one for tea, like I am.’ ‘Yes, please, I would,’ said Belinda, feeling this to be a comfortable classification. ‘I’m sure we need plenty of tea after all this excitement.’ ‘We certainly do,’ agreed Miss Prior.

When we grow older we lack the fine courage of youth, and even an ordinary task like making a pullover for somebody we love or used to love seems too dangerous to be undertaken.

On the threshold of sixty,’ mused Dr. Parnell. ‘That’s a good age for a man to marry. He needs a woman to help him into his grave.

Belinda decided that she could miss doing her room with a clear conscience, as there were so many more important things to be done. It was unlikely that Miss Liversedge would be visiting them and putting them to shame by writing 'E. Liversedge' with her finger, as she had once done when Emily had neglected to dust the piano.

She felt a glow of warm friendliness towards her, perhaps because of her rather plain, good-humoured face, her sensible felt hat, her not particularly well-cut tweed suit and her low-heeled shoes. Nothing from the ‘best houses’ here—all was as it should be in a clergyman’s wife.

Then she fretted, ah, she fretted, But ’ere six months had gone past, She had got another poodle dog Exactly like the last.… thought Belinda frivolously, but the old song had come into her head and seemed appropriate. Some tame gazelle or some gentle dove or even a poodle dog—something to love, that was the point.

Good wine and old books seem to go together.

She had suddenly seen Agatha as pathetic and the picture was disturbing. Now she knew that there could never be anything pathetic about Agatha. Poised and well-dressed, used to drinking champagne, the daughter of a bishop and the wife of an archdeacon—that was Agatha Hoccleve. It was Belinda Bede who was the pathetic one and it was so much easier to bear the burden of one’s own pathos than that of somebody else. Indeed, perhaps the very recognition of it in oneself meant that it didn’t really exist. Belinda took a rather large sip of champagne and looked round the hall with renewed courage.

Nearly twenty-past one!’ said Harriet, as they sat down to their meal. ‘The Archdeacon has delayed everything. I suppose he imagined Emily would be cooking.’ ‘I don’t suppose he thought about it at all, men don’t as a rule,’ said Belinda, ‘they just expect meals to appear on the table and they do.

And yet why should she not be allowed her occasional joys, such very mild ones, which were mostly remembrance of things past?

He must be about fifty-seven or fifty-eight,’ said Harriet, who seemed to have been doing a little calculation. ‘It will be nice to see dear Theo again.’ ‘On the threshold of sixty,’ mused Dr. Parnell. ‘That’s a good age for a man to marry. He needs a woman to help him into his grave.

She had rheumatism too, but Belinda realized that she would have to have something out of self-defence and perhaps with the passing of the years it had become a reality. One never knew.

It was such a pity, Belinda reflected, that clergymen were so apt to bring out the worst in each other, especially with the season of Peace and Goodwill so near.