how unobservant one could be. I said (knowing that old man Barton liked hearing about such things) “We’ve got a grandfather clock in the hall at home and for years and years I thought the maker’s name was ‘ Thos. Verney. London.’ Then one day I decided to give the old brass face a polish up and I found that it was ‘ Thos. Vernon. Ludlow!’ ” Barton thought this a pleasing coincidence because he lived in Shropshire and had been to Ludlow Races. A square mile of Shropshire, he asserted, was worth the whole of France. Durley (who was reading Great Expectations with a face that expressed release from reality) put in a mild plea for Stoke Newington, which was where he lived; it contained several quaint old corners if you knew where to look for them, and must, he said, have been quite a sleepy sort of place in Dickens’s days. Reverting to my original topic, I remarked, “We’ve got an old barometer, too, but it never works. Ever since I can remember, it’s pointed to ‘Expect Wet from N.E. ’ Last time I was on leave I noticed that it’s not ‘Expect’ but ‘Except’—though goodness knows what that means!” My companions, who were disinclined to be talkative, assured me that with such a brain I ought to be on the Staff.
Strolling under the aspens that shivered and twinkled by the river, I allowed myself a little daydream, based on the leisurely ticking of the old Ludlow clock. … Was it only three weeks ago that I had been standing there at the foot of the staircase, between the barometer and the clock, on just such a fine summer morning as this? Upstairs in the bathroom Aunt Evelyn was putting sweet peas and roses in water, humming to herself while she arranged them to her liking. Visualizing the bathroom with its copper bath and basin (which “took such a lot of cleaning”), its lead floor, and the blue and white Dutch tiles along the walls, and the elder tree outside the window, I found these familiar objects almost as dear to me as Aunt Evelyn herself, since they were one with her in my mind (though for years she’d been talking about doing away with the copper bath and basin).