The Tune of Love

A Wedding Day

A Gift from the Dead

The Music of Two Courtyards

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AUNT OLIVE IN BOHEMIA

CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF THE FAIRY TALE

THE BEGINNING OF THE FAIRY TALE

ONCE upon a time, as the fairy tales have it, there was a certain country town. It was a sleepy little town, where few things happened. It was like a dog grown old and lazy with basking in the sun, undisturbed by motor-cars and modern rush. An occasional event like a fly, and as small and insignificant as that insect, would settle momentarily upon it. For an instant it would be roused, shake itself, and promptly go to sleep again.

O

The houses in the town were all alike—small, detached, and built of red brick. They were named after the shrubs and trees that grew in their gardens. There was the Myrtles, the Hawthorns, the Laurels, the Yews, the Poplars, and many others.

One May morning, when the flowers on the laburnum trees were hanging in a shower of golden rain, and the pink and white blossoms of the hawthorn bushes were filling the air with a sweet and [Pg 12]sickly scent, a single cab, drawn by a horse as sleepy as the town to which it belonged, drove up the small, clean street, and turned in at the gate marked the Poplars.

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Two small children with satchels on their backs paused to peep up the drive. They saw two black boxes being hoisted by the driver on to the roof of the cab. There was nothing, one would think, of vital interest in the sight, but it proved more attractive than the thought of lesson books and school-room benches. They remained to gaze.

In a couple of moments a woman came through the front door. She was clad in a black cashmere dress of ample folds, partly 

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