Read "Odds and Ends" by B.M. Croker online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"What is the matter? What has happened?" asked Aunt Lizzie. "Just open the window and find out," she added, with her usual brisk decision.
It was nine o'clock on a dull September evening, and we two ladies were seated side by side in a 40 h.p. Daimler, which had suddenly come to a full stop on a country road, in the west of Ireland. On either hand stretched a wide expanse of dark mysterious country, to which the white waving bog cotton gave a ghostly, weird appearance. Black water in neighbouring bog-holes flashed back on us like phantom eyes, a dazzling reflection of the motor's huge lamps. Undoubtedly our outlook was sombre and discouraging -- as if the land nurtured some secret sorrow that no stranger could properly understand. The moon had not yet risen, but was shyly peeping at us from behind a low range of distant hills; not a soul was in sight, nor a sound to be heard, except the cry of a belated curlew, and the voices of our men; the car itself had ceased to throb.