Recalled to Life (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...was on the ground that day, and I managed to get into conversation with him, and strolled off in the grounds. There I showed him the photograph, and asked if he could identify the man climbing over the wagon: but he said he couldn't recognise him. Somebody or other from Torquay, perhaps; not a regular resident. The figures were so small, and so difficult to make sure about. If I'd leave him the photograph, perhaps-but at that I drew back, for I didn't want anybody, least of all at Torquay, to know what quest I was engaged upon. We drove back, a merry party enough, in spite of my failure. Minnie was always so jolly, and her mirth was contagious. She talked all the way still of Dr. Ivor, half-teasing me. It was all very well my pretending not to remember, she said; but why did I want to see the cricket-field if it wasn't for that? Poor Courtenay if only he knew, how delighted he'd be to know he wasn't forgotten For he really took it to heart, my illness-she always called it my illness, and so I suppose it was. From the day I lost my memory, nothing seemed to go right with him; and he was never content till he went and buried himself somewhere in the wilds of Canada. That evening again, I sat with Minnie in my room. I was depressed and distressed. I didn't want to cry before Minnie, but I could have cried with good heart for sheer vexation. Of course I couldn't bear to go showing the photograph to all the world, and letting everybody see I'd made myself a sort of amateur detective. They would mistake my motives so. And yet I didn't know how I was ever to find out my man any other way. It was that or nothing. I made up my mind I would ask Cousin Willie. I took out the photograph, as if unintentionally, when I went to my box, and laid it down with my curling-tongs on the table close by Minnie. Minnie took it up abstractedly and looked at it with an indefinite gaze. "Why, this is the cricket-field " she cried, as soon as she collected her senses....