The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gallery, by Roger Phillips Graham
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 Gallery
Author: Roger Phillips Graham
Illustrator: Llewellyn
Release Date: October 16, 2008 [EBook #26936]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALLERY ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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
|