Jeremy by Hugh Walpole

There was a horrible Sunday dinner when--the silence and the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the dining- room quivering with heat, emphasised every minute of the solemn ticking clock--Mary suddenly burst into tears, choked over a glass of water, and was led from the room. Jeremy ate his beef and rice pudding in silence, except that once or twice in a low, hoarse voice whispered: "Pass the mustard, please," or "Pass the salt, please." Miss Jones, watching his white face and the tremble of his upper lip, longed to say something to comfort him, but wisely held her peace.

After dinner Jeremy collected Hamlet and went to the conservatory. This, like so many other English conservatories, was a desolate and desperate little place, where boxes of sand, dry corded-looking bulbs, and an unhappy plant or two languished, forgotten and forlorn. It had been inherited with the house many years ago, and, at first, the Coles had had the ambition to make it blaze with colour, to grow there the most marvellous grapes, the richest tomatoes, and even--although it was a little out of place in the house of a clergyman of the Church of England--the most sinister of orchids. Very quickly the little conservatory had been abandoned; the heating apparatus had failed, the plants had refused to grow, the tomatoes never appeared, the bulbs would not burst into colour.