文档介绍：THE SLOWCOACH
THE SLOWCOACH
BY E. V. LUCAS.
1
THE SLOWCOACH
CHAPTER 1: THE AVORIES
Once upon a time there was a nice family. Its name was Avory, and it
lived in an old house in Chiswick, where the Thames is so sad on grey
days and so gay on sunny ones.
Mr.--or rather Captain--Avory was dead; he had been wounded at
Spion Kop, and died a few years after. Mrs. Avory was thirty-five, and she
had four children. The eldest was , aged fourteen, and the youngest
was Gregory Bruce, aged seven. Between these came Robert Oliver, who
was thirteen, and Hester, who was nine.
They were all very fond of each other, and they rarely quarreled. (If
they had done so, I should not be telling this story. You don't catch me
writing books about people who quarrel.) They adored their mother.
The name of the Avories' house was "The Gables," which was a better
name than many houses have, because there actually were gables in its
roof. Hester, who had funny ideas, wanted to see all the people who lived
in all the houses that are called "The Gables" everywhere drawn up in a
row so that she might examine them. She used to lie awake at night and
wonder how many there would be. "I'm sure mother would be the most
beautiful, anyway," she used to say.
History was Hester's passion. She could read history all day. Here she
differed from Robert Oliver, who was all for geography. Their friends
knew of these tastes, of course, and so Hester's presents were nearly
always history books or portraits of great men, such as Napoleon and
Shakespeare, both of whom she almost worshipped, while Robert's were
compasses and maps. He also had a mapmeasurer (from Mr. Lenox), and
at the moment at which this story opens, his birthday being just over, he
was the possessor of a pedometer, which he carried fastened to his leg,
under his knickerbockers, so that it was certain to register every time he
took a step. He kept a careful record of the distance he had walked since
his birth