1
The Garden Party
by
Katherine Mansfield
CONTENTS
1. At the Bay
2. The Garden Party
3. The Daughters of the Late Colonel
4. Mr. and Mrs. Dove
5. The Young Girl
6. Life of Ma Parker
7. Marriage a la Mode
8. The Voyage
9. Miss Brill
10. Her First Ball
11. The Singing Lesson
12. The Stranger
13. Bank Holiday
14. An Ideal Family
15. The Lady's-Maid
Chapter 1.
I.
Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtium leaves. It looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, as though one immense wave had come rippling, rippling--how far? Perhaps if you had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fish flicking in at the window and gone again...
Ah-Aah! sounded the sleepy sea. And from the bush there came th