During the summer interval between the end of Grade XIII and First Year university, Brian Bourne was awarded a holiday in England at his parents’ expense, the only proviso being that he would take his younger brothers with him, the first trip the trio would take without adult supervision.
After a frustratingly long and hot afternoon walk from the train station, the three teenagers approached the house they were to stay in that night with some trepidation. Could this rambling old house really be the home of an Oxford don? It was situated remotely, but splendidly and silently on a low hill, and surrounded by tall thin trees that Brian said were poplars, but he might have been wrong. His knowledge of English trees, like the boys’ knowledge of Oxford dons, was limited. Before them stretched a swath of tall, unmown yellow grass, swaying in the breeze, indicative of long neglect. They advanced through it uncertainly, two carrying their packsacks and Brian a suitcase, in search of a path to the front door, but finding none, persisted in their forward march single file, cautiously, like colonial troopers approaching a native village prepared for a sudden unfriendly challenge. It came as a shutter on the second floor was thrown open.
“Yoo-hoo!” came a loud refined voice, shattering the silence. “ All deliveries to the rear entrance, please, the tradesmen’s entrance.” Just as swiftly, the shutter closed and silence reigned once more. Brian, puzzled, put down his suitcase. His brothers, open-mouthed, looked to him for directions. He motioned to them to follow him through a decrepit gate leaning drunkenly on its hinges, beyond which a stone path appeared to circle the house, and leading to a back door being held ajar by a pleasant, round-faced woman in an apron, quite evidently not the woman who had shouted at them. She ushered them into an old-fashioned kitchen with a massive stove and a stone sink with open shelving above, a kitchen Dennis thought was right out of Anne Shirley’s Green Gables.
“You must be the boys the missus was mentioning,” she said, “come all the way from Canada. Oi am Bridget, surname Bridges, Bridget Bridges,” she continued with a laugh. “Quite a mouthful, Oi know, but Bridget Mayne, as was, before marriage. And who may ye be?” Brian introduced himself and his brothers, Dennis and Neville. “You was expected,” she told them. Brian was relieved. Bridget was a maternal figure, mother of five boys herself, she said, and Dr. Strong’s housekeeper, “but only mornings, mind, except when—”
