The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gallery, by Roger Phillips Graham

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Title: The Gallery

Author: Roger Phillips Graham

Illustrator: Llewellyn

Release Date: October 16, 2008 [EBook #26936]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE
GALLERY

By ROG PHILLIPS

ILLUSTRATOR LLEWELLYN

_Aunt Matilda needed him
desperately, but when he
arrived she did not want
him and neither did anyone
else in his home town._

I was in the midst of the fourth draft of my doctorate thesis when Aunt
Matilda's telegram came. It could not have come at a worse time. The
deadline for my thesis was four days away and there was a minimum of
five days of hard work to do on it yet. I was working around the clock.

If it had been a telegram informing me of her death I could not have
taken time out to attend the funeral. If it had been a telegram saying
she was at death's door I'm very much afraid I would have had to call
the hospital and order them to keep her alive a few days longer.

Instead, it was a tersely worded appeal. ARTHUR STOP COME AT ONCE STOP
AM IN TERRIBLE TROUBLE STOP DO NOT PHONE STOP AUNT MATILDA.

So there was nothing else for me to do. I laid the telegram aside and
kept on working on my thesis. That is not as heartless as it might seem.
I simply could not imagine Aunt Matilda in terrible trouble. The end of
the world I could imagine, but not Aunt Matilda in trouble.

[Illustration: Wherever he went Arthur felt the power behind the lens.]

She was the classic flat-chested ageless spinster living alone in the
midst of her dustless bric-a-brac and Spode in a frame house of the same
vintage as herself at the edge of the classic small town of Sumac, near
the southwest corner of Wisconsin. I had visited her for two days over a
year ago, and she had looked exactly the same as she had when I stayed
with her when I was six all summer, and there was no question but what
she would some day attend my funeral when I died of old age, and she
would still look th