Explore "The Osbornes" by E.F. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Uncle Alf was seated with Dora on the terrace at Grote one afternoon late in August. Dora herself was hatless and cloakless, for it was a day of windless and summer heat, but Uncle Alf had an overcoat on, and a very shabby old gray shawl in addition cast about his shoulders. His face wore an expression of ludicrous malevolence.
"And I had to come out here, my dear, and take refuge with you," he said, "for Maria will drive me off my head with talk of that tumour of hers. Why, she speaks as if nobody had ever had a tumour before. I said to her, ‘Maria, if it had been cancer now, and you'd got over as you have, it might have been something to make a tale of. ' But tumour, God bless me! and benignant, so Sir Henry said, at that."