Dulcie went into the drawing-room, picturing Maisie as a tower of strength and wondering why her aunt had bothered to say the conventional thing about there being a nice fire in the drawing-room. She crouched down on the hearth rug by the sad smoking coals and began to look at some old copies of The Field which were lying in a heap on a brown leather pouf. She turned to the 'Answers to Correspondents' and read how to feed hamsters. She agonized with one who cried, 'Why do white maggots appear in the stems of my brassica plants?', but the query of a correspondent from -- of all places -- Montevideo, who wanted to know how he could stop a mat in his lounge from curling up at the edges, baffled her, and she found herself quite unable to picture either the 'lounge' or the mat in such an exotic setting.
Barbara Pym
No Fond Return of Love
I mean, I'm serious. Even typing it out, I'm smiling as I reach the maggots, and when the mat makes its appearance, even for the nteenth time, I laugh aloud.
2 comments:
Not a fan of maggots, but I laughed, too, for the absurd moment.
Well, I'm not a fan of maggots, either, but the idea of writing in to a magazine help column about a mat curling up at the edges gets me every time. Actually, the crisis of the maggots on the brassica plants kind of does it to me, too -- that it's a crisis, that is. This just seems like such a picture of the human condition . . .
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