Sheaves by E.F. Benson — Read

Canon Alington had just returned from a ten days' holiday, which he had spent in yachting in the calm and pleasant waters of the Solent. He had been in extreme health and vigour before he started, but when he came back a week after Hugh and Edith had come down to Mannington again, he felt it had quite set him up. His wife had written to him every day during his absence, giving news of Ambrose and Perpetua, and the sweet peas and had mentioned the arrival of the Graingers. This was _à propos_ of the Literific, as it was now quite generally called by the members of the Society, and Mrs. Grainger, who with her husband had been unanimously elected in the course of the last winter, had promised to read them a paper at their June meeting, to which the members looked forward very much, since it was, of course, widely known that she was the author of "Gambits," and something very advanced might be expected.

The Canon had arrived late on Saturday evening, and he and his wife had had a great deal to talk about. His life on the sea had made quite a sailor of him, and when they sat in his study after dinner, he had been distinctly nautical. The double herbaceous bed, lying on each side of the path, for instance, had been under discussion, and when Canon Alington asked whether the delphiniums on the left of the path were getting on well, he alluded to the left as the port side. He corrected her, too, about the position of a purple clematis whose health had been indifferent when he went away. There were several climbing up the trellis work behind the bower, but the starboard clematis was the one he was anxious about. "Just close to the gate," he said -- "forward on the starboard. I shall have a lot of leeway to make up next week. And is everything a-low and aloft drawing well?"