Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw

ACT I

Covent Garden at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles
blowing frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter
into the market and under the portico of St. Paul's Church, where there
are already several people, among them a lady and her daughter in
evening dress. They are all peering out gloomily at the rain, except
one man with his back turned to the rest, who seems wholly preoccupied
with a notebook in which he is writing busily.

The church clock strikes the first quarter.

THE DAUGHTER [in the space between the central pillars, close to the
one on her left] I'm getting chilled to the bone. What can Freddy be
doing all this time? He's been gone twenty minutes.

THE MOTHER [on her daughter's right] Not so long. But he ought to have
got us a cab by this.

Tobermory by Saki

It was a chill, rain-washed afternoon of a late August day, that
indefinite season when partridges are still in security or cold
storage, and there is nothing to hunt--unless one is bounded on the
north by the Bristol Channel, in which case one may lawfully gallop
after fat red stags. Lady Blemley's house-party was not bounded on the
north by the Bristol Channel, hence there was a full gathering of her
guests round the tea-table on this particular afternoon. And, in spite
of the blankness of the season and the triteness of the occasion, there
was no trace in the company of that fatigued restlessness which means a
dread of the pianola and a subdued hankering for auction bridge. The
undisguised openmouthed attention of the entire party was fixed on the
homely negative personality of Mr. Cornelius Appin. Of all her guests,
he was the one who had come to Lady Blemley with the vaguest
reputation. Some one had said he was "clever," and he had got his
invitation in the moderate expectation, on the part of his hostess,
that some portion at least of his cleverness would be contributed to
the general entertainment. Until tea-time that day she had been unable
to discover in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay. He was
neither a wit nor a croquet champion, a hypnotic force nor a begetter
of amateur theatricals. Neither did his exterior suggest the sort of
man in whom women are willing to pardon a generous measure of mental
deficiency. He had subsided into mere Mr. Appin, and the Cornelius
seemed a piece of transparent baptismal bluff. And now he was claiming
to have launched on the world a discovery beside which the invention of
gunpowder, of the printing-press, and of steam locomotion were
inconsiderable trifles. Science had made bewildering strides in many
directions during recent decades, but this thing seemed to belong to
the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement.

The Doll's House by Katherine Mansfield

When dear old Mrs. Hay went back to town after staying with the Burnells she sent the children a doll's house. It was so big that the carter and Pat carried it into the courtyard, and there it stayed, propped up on two wooden boxes beside the feed-room door. No harm could come of it; it was summer. And perhaps the smell of paint would have gone off by the time it had to be taken in. For, really, the smell of paint coming from that doll's house ("Sweet of old Mrs. Hay, of course; most sweet and generous!") -- but the smell of paint was quite enough to make any one seriously ill, in Aunt Beryl's opinion. Even before the sacking was taken off. And when it was . . .
There stood the doll's house, a dark, oily, spinach green, picked out with bright yellow. Its two solid little chimneys, glued on to the roof, were painted red and white, and the door, gleaming with yellow varnish, was like a little slab of toffee. Four windows, real windows, were divided into panes by a broad streak of green. There was actually a tiny porch, too, painted yellow, with big lumps of congealed paint hanging along the edge.
But perfect, perfect little house! Who could possibly mind the smell? It was part of the joy, part of the newness.
"Open it quickly, some one!"

Miss Brill by Katherine Mansfield

Although it was so brilliantly fine--the blue sky powdered with gold
and great spots of light like white wine splashed over the Jardins
Publiques--Miss Brill was glad that she had decided on her fur. The air
was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint
chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now
and again a leaf came drifting--from nowhere, from the sky. Miss Brill
put up her hand and touched her fur. Dear little thing! It was nice to
feel it again. She had taken it out of its box that afternoon, shaken
out the moth-powder, given it a good brush, and rubbed the life back
into the dim little eyes. "What has been happening to me?" said the sad
little eyes. Oh, how sweet it was to see them snap at her again from
the red eiderdown!... But the nose, which was of some black composition,
wasn't at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow. Never mind--a
little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came--when it was
absolutely necessary... Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that
about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear. She could
have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt
a tingling in her hands and arms, but that came from walking, she
supposed. And when she breathed, something light and sad--no, not sad,
exactly--something gentle seemed to move in her bosom.

Counterparts by James Joyce

THE bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a furious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent:

"Send Farrington here!"

Miss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at a desk: "Mr. Alleyne wants you upstairs."

The man muttered "Blast him!" under his breath and pushed back his chair to stand up. When he stood up he was tall and of great bulk. He had a hanging face, dark wine-coloured, with fair eyebrows and moustache: his eyes bulged forward slightly and the whites of them were dirty. He lifted up the counter and, passing by the clients, went out of the office with a heavy step.

He went heavily upstairs until he came to the second landing, where a door bore a brass plate with the inscription Mr. Alleyne. Here he halted, puffing with labour and vexation, and knocked. The shrill voice cried:

"Come in!"

Eveline by James Joyce

SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.

Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it -- not like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field -- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word: "He is in Melbourne now."

The Phoenix by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Lord Strawberry, a nobleman, collected birds. He had the finest aviary in Europe, so large that eagles did not find it uncomfortable, so well laid out that both humming birds and snow-buntings had a climate that suited them perfectly. But for many years the finest set of apartments remained empty, with just a label saying: "PHOENIX. Habitat: Arabia."
Many authorities on bird life had assured Lord Strawberry that the phoenix is a fabulous bird, or that the breed was long extinct. Lord Strawberry was unconvinced: his family had always believed in phoenixes. At intervals he received from his agents (together with statements of their expenses) birds which they declared were the phoenix but which turned out to be orioles, macaws, turkey buzzards dyed orange, etc., or stuffed cross-breeds, ingeniously assembled from various plumages. Finally Lord Strawberry went himself to Arabia, where, after some months, he found a phoenix, won its confidence, caught it, and brought it home in perfect condition.