The Landlady Vocabulary

There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this that lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory.

Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person.

Holding her teacup high in one hand, inclining her head slightly to the left, she looked up at him out of the corners of her eyes and gave him another gentle little smile.

The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living room.

Suddenly, in a downstairs window that was brilliantly illuminated by a street lamp not six yards away, Billy caught sight of a printed notice propped up against the glass in one of the upper panes.

The name itself conjured up images of watery cabbage, rapacious landladies, and a powerful smell of kippers in the living room.

But now, even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork on their doors and windows and that the handsome white facades were cracked and blotchy from neglect.

On the other hand, a pub would be more congenial than a boardinghouse.

Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it, and reaching for the bell.

He waited for her to say something else, but she seemed to have lapsed into another of her silences.

The compulsion or, more accurately, the desire to follow after her into that house was extraordinarily strong.

He glanced down again at the book.

Christopher Mulholland
231 Cathedral Road, Cardiff

Gregory W. Temple
27 Sycamore Drive, Bristol

As a matter of fact, now he came to think of it, he wasn’t at all sure that the second name didn’t have almost as much of a familiar ring about it as the first.

There is nothing more tantalizing than a thing like this that lingers just outside the borders of one’s memory.

He went right up and peered through the glass into the room, and the first thing he saw was a bright fire burning in the hearth.

But Mr. Greenslade at the head office in London had told him it was a splendid town.

Everyone has to do that because it’s the law of the land, and we don’t want to go breaking any laws at this stage in the proceedings, do we?”

No. Was it one of his sister’s numerous young men, perhaps, or a friend of his father’s?

Each word was like a large black eye staring at him through the glass, holding him, compelling him, forcing him to stay where he was and not to walk away from that house, and the next thing he knew, he was actually moving across from the window to the front door of the house, climbing the steps that led up to it, and reaching for the bell.