A SPIRIT OF MIRTH

Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)*** About the author: Peggy Webling's 1927 dramatic adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" is notable for naming the creature "Frankenstein" after its creator, and for being the inspiration for the classic 1931 film directed by James Whale. *** An excerpt from the beginning of of the first chapter of "A Spirit of Mirth": NEW YEAR'S EVE -- WITHOUT, a cold, biting, wintry wind, which seemed to hurry up and down the narrow street as if it were imprisoned between the houses. Within, the warm, close atmosphere of a house in which several fires were burning and no windows open. Without, the fitful gleam of a hazy moon, drifting through grey clouds, and the glimmer of the street lamps, like smaller moons dropped on earth. Within, a steady glow from the hearth on the ground floor, a twinkle of a smaller fire in the room above, and the tiny winking light of a lowered gas-jet at the top. Without, the sound of the sighing wind and the flick of rain against the windows. Within, an occasional burst of talk from the kitchen in the basement, when the door was opened on the dark staircase, and
the unending jingle-jangle-thump-thump-thump of somebody playing on an old piano.
It was an ordinary, dull, shabby house in Airy Street, turning off Edgware Road. Rarely was a street so misnamed. All the cold winds, fogs and smells of the neighbourhood seemed to drift into Airy Street, but fresh air itself was strangely
absent. Mrs. Simmons said that the street was "an extree-ordinary place for smuts," and it gave that impression to strangers. The houses looked smutty; smuts gathered, like moths, round the gas-lamps, and even when the pillar-post was repainted every year its vivid scarlet was spoilt in a day with big, clinging smuts. None of these things were to be seen within the room. It was bare and curtainless; the old green blind, being a little small even for the tiny pane, was framed in a narrow strip of grey light from without; the gas jet was turned almost as low as in the sitting-room; there were the shadowy outlines of several pieces of furniture—a chair, a little chest of drawers with a fixed looking-glass on top, a jug and basin on an equally diminutive washing-stand—and, facing the window, under the slope of the roof, a bedstead with knobs at each corner. The knobs looked big and black and seemed to sway about in the darkness, for they happened to stand out against the frame of the window. On the bed was a big coverlet of black-and-white check, well tucked in, and over the tidy line of white sheet at the top was the dark shape of a head, indefinite and misty in its tangled hair. This was Euphrosyne, wide awake. She was lying on her back, but her knees were drawn up so that she could grasp her small feet in her hands, or vigorously rub them. A man's coat, thrown over the bed, added weight, without warmth, to the blankets and coverlet. Had she stretched to her full length there would still have been a great expanse of cold sheet beyond. She often crept into the bottom of the bed and lay there, curled up like a kitten—it was a favourite trick of hers—but on this particular night she decided, after thinking it over, that the task was too chilly to be accomplished. Her chin pressed the bedclothes snugly against her neck, and her eyes roved slowly from object to object in the dim light. She was not in the least afraid of being alone, for her fancy filled the room with quaint companions. She saw "Florence" sitting on the one chair, dressed in white, while "Count-Countess" knelt at her feet in shining armour. "Florence" and "Count-Countess" were the hero and heroine of an endless, romantic story which little Euphrosyne told to herself, "Florence" being her favourite name, and "Count-Countess" an invention of her own as none of the men's names she knew sounded grand enough for a knight. The conversation between this imaginary couple, with which Euphrosyne was amusing herself at this minute, was always of a meandering, vague description, with many repetitions of "No, fair lady," and "Yes, brave knight."