Explore "Bring the Monkey" by Miles Franklin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There is room and to spare in the dining hall of Tattingwood to entertain an elephant or giraffe should the lord of that manor have taste for such guests.
We spread a sheet at one corner and brought in a small heavy garden table, and on it set Percy's tiny bowl of light ware, from which he would drink in his human ultra-dainty fashion. These jobs gave me an excuse to run up and down stairs while the guests were in their burrows dressing. As I turned into the great gallery from the tower stairs the Chief Inspector, already dressed, was ahead of me, evidently going the rounds in his official capacity. His evening uniform was beyond sartorial censure, fresh yet easy, and his flesh glowed with fragrant health; a man to win any woman, and yet he seemed true to Clarice, the ineffectual, ten or twelve years his senior, and making no attempt to soften the disparity. There was dignity in the stability of this romance when compared with those that are as fleeting as barnyard amours. If he really did not desire Clarice's fortune, it was classical, even colossical.