Free The Present and the Past by Ivy Compton-Burnett

used before.’
    â€˜Will someone fetch me some apples from the storehouse?’ said Mrs Frost.
    Ainger gave a nod to Simon, and he rose and left the room. In the hall he encountered the sons of the house on their way to the garden.
    â€˜Well, Simon,’ said Fabian.
    â€˜Good afternoon, sir,’ said Simon.
    â€˜Can you have a game with us?’ said Guy.
    â€˜I have left school, sir,’ said Simon, with a note of surprise.
    â€˜Very nice boy,’ said Toby, whose hand was held by Fabian.
    â€˜What do you want to be when you grow up?’ said Henry.
    â€˜Very nice buttons,’ added Toby.
    â€˜A butler, sir,’ said Simon.
    â€˜Would you rather be a butler, than a king?’ said Henry, struck by something in the tone.
    â€˜Well, perhaps not, sir,’ said Simon, brought to face with another kind of advancement.
    As the talk went on, Toby disengaged his hand and wandered about the hall. He saw a vase on the table and sent his eyes from it to his brothers. Then he werit behind the table and threw it on the ground, and as it broke, gave himself to guarded mirth, hampered by further glances. Then he rejoined the group and placed his hand in Fabian’s.
    Bennet came singing down the stairs.
    â€˜Why, look at that vase! Has any one of you touched it?’
    â€˜We did not know it was there,’ said Fabian.
    Toby kept his eyes on Simon.
    â€˜Oh, dear, oh, dear!’ said Henry, looking after the latter. ‘I don’t want to be a servant. And if I did, I could be one and be happy.’
    â€˜Fabian hold Toby’s hand too tight,’ said Toby, frowning and pulling it away.
    â€˜It kept you out of mischief,’ said his brother.
    â€˜Very good boy,’ said Toby.

Chapter 5
    â€˜Ursula, our hour has come,’ said Elton Scrope. ‘I mean, of course, that the hour has come. The occasion is upon us.’
    â€˜And we do not deserve an occasion. No one deserves anything so good or so bad. We all deserve so little.’
    â€˜A sister is returning to us, who was said to be our second mother, and who must have been that, as what is said is always true; a sister who wrote weekly letters and watched over us from afar.’
    â€˜And now will watch over us in our own home. No, we do not deserve it.’
    â€˜We have had such a dear, little, narrow life. Will Catherinebroaden and enrich it? I could not bear a wealth of experience. It will be enough to live with someone who has had it.’
    â€˜She will be too occupied with adding to it to want to share it,’ said Ursula.
    â€˜So we do want the occasion. My heart told me we did. We are jealous of her other life. It is a natural, ordinary emotion, but I do think we can claim it.’
    â€˜What is the good of a second mother, if she becomes the first mother of other people? No one likes the second place. No place at all is different. We will not say if we should like that.’
    â€˜Will you give up the housekeeping?’
    â€˜Yes. I resent being supplanted, but I am glad to give it up. I don’t mind the trivial task, but I dislike being known to do it. I am sensitive to opinion.’
    â€˜Most people are that.’
    â€˜I don’t think they can be, when I am.’
    â€˜Don’t you take any interest in household things? I take so much.’
    â€˜I want to have a soul above them, and to be thought to have one.’
    â€˜I have a soul just on their level. Do you think we have souls?’
    â€˜No,’ said Ursula.
    â€˜Do you mind that?’
    â€˜Not yet; I am only thirty-two; but when I am older I shall mind it; when extinction is imminent. Now it is too far away.’
    â€˜We may die at any moment.’
    â€˜Not you and I. It is other people who may die young.’
    â€˜Why should we be exceptions?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I wonder what the reasons are?’
    â€˜You don’t think you and I will have an eternity