Half-Past Bedtime, by Sir Henry Howarth Bashford. (1880-1961)
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Howarth_Bashford
Published: Boston, Houghton Mifflin (1922)
The Project Gutenberg EBook Release Date: January 21, 2011 [EBook #35029].
Chapter 1 Mr.Jugg The name of the town doesn’t really matter; but it was a big town in the middle of the country; and the first of these adventures happened to a little girl whose name was Marian. She was only seven when it happened to her, so that it was rather a young sort of adventure; but the older ones happened later on, and this is the best, perhaps, to begin with.
Marian’s house was in a street called Peter Street, because there was a church in it called St Peter’s Church; and some people liked this church, because it had a great spire soaring up into the sky. But Marian’s daddy didn’t like spires, because they were so sharp and so slippery. He liked towers better, because the old church towers, he said, were like little laps, ready to catch God’s blessing. But Marian’s daddy was a queer sort of man, and nobody took much notice of what he said…
Chapter 2 Gwendolen Living in the same town as Marian there was a little girl called Gwendolen. Marian didn’t know her very well, though they went to the same school and sometimes smiled at each other in church. Her father and mother were always climbing mountains and lecturing about them afterward, so Gwendolen had to live with her aunt, who was very rich and wore a lot of rings.
In many ways Gwendolen was a nice girl, but she had an exceptionally large tummy. Some people said that it was her own fault, because she was always sitting about eating marzipan. But some people said that she couldn’t help her tummy, and had to eat a lot to keep it full. There were also people who said that her aunt spoiled her, being so greedy herself and always eating buttered toast…
