Gray Youth Author:Oliver Onions Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II THE SURPRISE PARTY LENEKNE," the boarding-house between Brook Green and Goldhawk Road in which Amory lived with her aunt, was really two large houses th... more »rown into one; and, besides sheltering its twenty-odd guests, it served as a sort of academy for the teaching of English to foreign waiters. These came—German, Swiss, Danish, Belgian, even Turkish—without a word of our tongue, gave their services for several months in return for their food, and a year or so later were to be found in the restaurants of Frith and Old Compton Streets and the brasseries of Leicester Square, as English as you please. Perhaps in the manner of food they came off better than did the guests themselves, for, while the establishment provided four set meals a day, you had to sit down to all of these unless you would go slightly hungry. Miss one and you never quite caught up again. But you forgot this slight nearness to the knuckle in the fullness with which Miss Addams's advertisement in The Shepherd's Bush Times—the one that began " Young Musical Society "—was redeemed. Every night there was something " on "; if it was not a whist drive or singing it was an impromptu dance in the large double drawing-room on the first floor, orcharades, or a semi-private rehearsal by the Glenerne contingent of the Goldhawk Amateur Dramatic Society. The esprit de pension was very strong; it was as if a vow of loyalty to Miss Addams's cruets had been taken. The walls of the drawing-room were trophied with the photographs of former guests; these stood, framed or unframed, in groves on the mantelpiece (indeed, when Christmas came round with its cards, it was impossible to open a door without bringing whole castles of photographs and pasteboard greetings down into the fender) ; and, ranged on one special little w...« less