The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Garden Party

Author: Katherine Mansfield

Posting Date: August 20, 2008 [EBook #1429]
Release Date: 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARDEN PARTY ***

Produced by Sue Asscher

THE GARDEN PARTY

By Katherine Mansfield

CONTENTS

1. At the Bay

2. The Garden Party

3. The Daughters of the Late Colonel

4. Mr. and Mrs. Dove

5. The Young Girl

6. Life of Ma Parker

7. Marriage a la Mode

8. The Voyage

9. Miss Brill

10. Her First Ball

11. The Singing Lesson

12. The Stranger

13. Bank Holiday

14. An Ideal Family

15. The Lady's-Maid

1. AT THE BAY.

Chapter 1.I.

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent
Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the
back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks
and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and
bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with
reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and
where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops
hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi
was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the
bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the
cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtium leaves. It
looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, as though
one immense wave had come rippling, rippling--how far? Perhaps if you
had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fish
flicking in at the window and gone again....

Ah-Aah! sounded the sleepy sea. And from the bush there came the sound
of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth
stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the
splashing of big drops on large leaves, and something else--what was
it?--a faint stirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig and then such
silence that