Tobermory and Other Stories
Language: English
Pages: 96
ISBN: B00LDYLSM6
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
At a country house party Cornelius Appin announces that he has discovered a method by which animals can be taught to speak. His latest pupil is none other than Tobermory, the ginger cat belonging to his hosts, Sir Wilfred and Lady Blemley. As the guests express astonishment and incredulity, Sir Wilfred goes off to find Tobermory, who is lounging in the smoking room waiting for his tea. What Appin claims is true, and Tobermory demonstrates his remarkable talents with a number of embarrassing and revelatory comments which prove more than a little uncomfortable for the assembled guests. In addition to 'Tobermory', this anthology features a selection of animal stories by one of the greatest writers of short stories in the English language.
the hedge that bordered the lane, but the tough branches held him fast. The hounds of Fate had waited for him in those narrow lanes, and this time they were not to be denied. MRS PACKLETIDE’S TIGER IT WAS MRS Packletide’s pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of inhabitants. The
But she was not mistress of the kitchen. On one of the shelves of an old dresser, in company with chipped sauce-boats, pewter jugs, cheese-graters, and paid bills, rested a worn and ragged Bible, on whose front page was the record, in faded ink, of a baptism dated ninety-four years ago. ‘Martha Crale’ was the name written on that yellow page. The yellow, wrinkled old dame who hobbled and muttered about the kitchen, looking like a dead autumn leaf which the winter winds still pushed hither and
him to a picnic tomorrow, starting at an early hour; he’s not the sort to go out for a ride before breakfast. The day after I’ll get the rector to drive him over to Crowleigh before lunch, to see the new cottage hospital they’re building there. The Brogue will be standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer to exercise it; then it can pick up a stone or something of the sort and go conveniently lame. If you hurry on the wedding a bit the lameness fiction can be kept up till the ceremony is
revision of verdict, and Octavian one day picked up a sheet of copy-book paper on which was painstakingly written: ‘Beast. Rats eated your chickens.’ More ardently than ever did he wish for an opportunity for sloughing off the disgrace that enwrapped him, and earning some happier nickname from his three unsparing judges. And one day a chance inspiration came to him. Olivia, his two-year-old daughter, was accustomed to spend the hour from high noon till one o’clock with her father while the
pigs eating babies. ‘You surely wouldn’t treat my poor little Olivia in that way?’ he pleaded. ‘You killed our little cat,’ came in stern reminder from three throats. ‘I’m very sorry I did,’ said Octavian, and if there is a standard of measurement in truths Octavian’s statement was assuredly a large nine. ‘We shall be very sorry when we’ve killed Olivia,’ said the girl, ‘but we can’t be sorry till we’ve done it.’ The inexorable child-logic rose like an unyielding rampart before Octavian’s