Extracts from Fiction
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Fiction’
Master-sweep Grimes meets a woman who knows more about him than he feels comfortable with.
Thomas Grimes, a North-country chimney-sweep, is on his way to an important job with his young apprentice, also called Tom, and (on the far side of the roadside wall) a barefoot Irish peasant woman, who has taken a shine to little Tom. The envious Grimes has gone so far as to wash his face in a nearby stream, which Tom is now desperate to try for himself.
The simple folk of Brittany know what it means when a nobleman calls himself godfather to an unknown infant.
Rafael Sabatini’s ‘Scaramouche’ is the tale of Andre-Louis Moreau, a young lawyer of no great convictions who becomes caught up in the French Revolution of 1789 through loyalty to a friend. The novel opens by placing Moreau against his family background — a difficult matter, though Breton gossip thinks it has got it all worked out.
Sherlock Holmes turns to his brother for help when the case of a missing Greek proves unexpectedly troublesome.
A translator in London has witnessed what he believes is the kidnapping of a Greek man. Sherlock Holmes is frustrated by the lack of data, so he takes Dr Watson to see his brother Mycroft at the exclusive Diogenes Club. Mycroft, Sherlock claims, is an even better detective than he is.
Alice was given a choice between her carriage and lady’s maid on the one hand, and Richard Grey on the other.
Anne Brontë’s novel Agnes Grey tells the tale of a young woman forced to earn a meagre and humiliating living as a governess. The shock of employment and the utterly alien lives of her employers is hard to bear, but no daughter of Richard and Alice Grey was afraid of a little self-sacrifice.
The guardian of a lonely signalbox recounts a truly haunting experience.
While exploring the branch lines radiating out from Mugby Junction, a man has stumbled on a remote signal box near the mouth of a tunnel. ‘Halloa! Below there!’ he called to the signalman, waving his arms. The signalman’s distress was so remarkable that it required an explanation, and next day he gave it.
David Balfour hopes his crusty uncle Ebenezer is beginning to soften towards him.
David Balfour’s father has died, leaving him only a letter of introduction to take to his uncle Ebenezer in the grand-sounding House of Shaws in Scotland. Uncle Ebenezer proves to be miserly, and his house cold comfort, but David is willing to make himself useful, and after an unpromising start the old man seems to be coming round.