United States or Denmark ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Emsworth was originally of far less importance than Warblington, of which it was a hamlet. There the fair was upon the morrow of the feast of the Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury, to which saint the parish church of Warblington is dedicated.
If the Honorable Freddie had gone to church he would not have been running down the great staircase at the castle at this hour; and if he had not been running down the great staircase at the castle at that hour he would not have encountered Muriel. Muriel was a Persian cat belonging to Lady Ann Warblington.
A resolute hostess might have saved the situation; but Lady Ann Warblington's abilities in that direction stopped short at leaving everything to Mrs. Twemlow and writing letters in her bedroom. When Lady Ann Warblington was not writing letters in her bedroom which was seldom, for she had an apparently inexhaustible correspondence she was nursing sick headaches in it.
The hall at Blandings Castle was more an extra drawing-room than a hall; and, when not nursing a sick headache in her bedroom, Lady Ann Warblington would dispense afternoon tea there to her guests. Consequently it was dotted pretty freely with small tables. There were, indeed, no fewer than five more in various spots, waiting to be bumped into and smashed.
The "castle" came in 1551 to Sir Richard Cotton, whose son George entertained Queen Elizabeth there for two days in 1586. In 1643 a Richard Cotton held the "strong house" of Warblington against the Parliament till it was taken by "sixty soldiers and a hundred muskets." All that remains of the place to-day is a beautiful octagonal tower of red brick and stone, once part of the main gateway.
Twemlow the suggestion that they and their peers should gather together in the same room in which they were to dine would have been as repellent as an announcement from Lady Ann Warblington, the chatelaine, that the house party would eat in the drawing-room. When Ashe, returning from his interview with Mr.
Word Of The Day