Daily Pym

‘Oh, this is a most reputable and old-established business,’ said Mr Bason. ‘They tell me that Queen Mary often used to pop in — in the old days, of course.’ 

‘That does sound reassuring,’ I said. ‘Any connection with royalty is that, don’t you think?’

‘With our royal family certainly,’ Mr Bason agreed, ‘though some one could mention wouldn’t inspire quite the same confidence.’

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty one

The people sitting or standing around us were all in the fresh bloom of youth; they were the young people one saw and read about but seldom met. They made a person who was only ten or so years older feel very old indeed.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty one

‘Miss — Madam — come quickly!’ she cried. ‘The bees are swarming!’

‘But what can I do?’ I called out, looking around me helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything about bees. Isn’t the gardener here?’

‘Oh Madam, he’s digging a grave!’ came the agitated answer.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty

‘Did you fall in love with him that evening at the parish hall?’ I asked. ‘It would be wonderful to think that love could blossom in such surroundings.’ I thought of the chipped Della Robbia plaques, the hissing of gas fires and tea urns and the curious smell of damp mackintoshes that seemed to pervade it, and perhaps all parish halls everywhere. Why, indeed, shouldn’t love blossom here rather more than in conventional romantic surroundings?

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty

‘You see, Wilmet, Marius has asked me to marry him — that’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you. Do you think it’s so very dreadful of him?’

I could hardly confess my first reaction to her news, which was the perhaps typically feminine one of astonishment that such a good looking man as Marius Ransome should want to marry anyone so dim and mousy as Mary Beamish.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty

I tried to make myself useful but there was very little for me to do. The weather was glorious, but it seemed wanton to be lying in a deckchair in the mornings while Mary was arranging things for the coming retreat, so I took an upright canvas chair, or sat on a hard wooden seat of the kind that looks as if it might have been given in memory of someone.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty

The only thing that was settled was that we should go for a holiday in August, staying at the hotel in Cornwall which James and Hilary Cash had recommended. It seemed that Rodney had been extremely fortunate in getting accommodation there — only the mention of James’s name had made it possible — and I foresaw that we should be carrying with us a burden of gratitude, having to exclaim continually about how lucky we had been.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter twenty

‘Wilmet, I have enjoyed myself,’ he said, fingering the curtains and turning them back to see if they were lined. I saw him give a little nod of approval when he discovered they were.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter nineteen

I wondered what I should do or say now that this new relationship had been established between us. But as it turned out I did not have to exert myself at all, for Keith now began to open his heart to me, to tell me his life history from the early days in Leicester up to the present moment. The little flat voice went relentlessly on, hardly allowing me even a formal murmur of sympathy or astonishment.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter nineteen

‘We had Piers here last weekend,’ she said, ‘with his friend Keith. I gather you went to tea with them and that the whole thing was a great success.’

I should not have described it quite like that myself, but that was obviously how it was to be.

— A Glass of Blessings, chapter nineteen