8th class English lesson 3 summary
Answers
Answer:
"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen;
"in the meantime you must try and put up with me."
Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of
the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than
ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping
the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.
"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat;
"you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse
than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there.
Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."
Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the
letters of introduction, came into the nice division.
"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had
had sufficient silent communion.
"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four
years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here."
He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.
"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.
"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton
was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest
masculine habitation.
"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your
sister's time."
"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of
place.
"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece,
indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.
"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do
with the tragedy?"
"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went
off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipeshooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful
wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without
warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice
lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks that they will
come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that
window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite
dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white
waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you
bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know,
sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in
through that window - "
She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room
with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.
"She has been very interesting," said Framton.
"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers
will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe
in the marshes to-day, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men-folk, isn't
it?"
She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck
in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially
successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was
giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the
open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have
paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.
"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance
of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the
tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least
detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so
much in agreement," he continued.
Explanation: