Luigi Berenger

Sub Umbra

VOLUME I

The merry month of May has always been famous for its propitious influence over the voluptuous senses of the fairer sex.

I will tell you two or three incidents which occurred to me in May 1898 when I went on a visit to my cousins in Sussex, or as I familiarly call them the She-Noodles, for the sport they afforded me at various times.

My uncle's is a nice country residence standing in large grounds of its own, and surrounded by small fields of arable and pasture land, interspersed by numerous interesting copses, through which run footpaths and shady walks, where you are not likely to meet anyone in a month.

I shall not trouble my readers with the name of the locality.

Well, to go on, these cousins consisted of Annie, Sophie and Polly, beside their brother Frank, who, at nineteen was the oldest, the girls being respectively eighteen, sixteen and fifteen.

After dinner, the first day of my arrival, Paterfamilias and mama both indulged in a snooze in their arm chair, whilst us boys and girls (I was the same age as Frank) took a stroll in the grounds. I attached myself more particularly to my cousin Annie, a finely developed blonde, with deep eyes, pouting red lips and a full heaving bosom, which to me looked like a perfect volcano of smothered desires.

Frank was a very indolent fellow, who loved to smoke his cigar and expected his sisters, who adored him to sit by his side, reading some of his novels of the day, or tell him their love secrets, etc.

This was far too tame an amusement for me and as I had not been there for nearly three years, I requested Annie to show me the improvements in the grounds before we went in to tea, saying to Frank banteringly:

I suppose old fellow, you're too lazy and would prefer your sister taking me around?

I'm too comfortable; lazy is an ugly word, Walter, but the fact is Soph is just reading an interesting book, and I can't leave it, he replied: Besides Sissie is just as well or better qualified than I am to show the grounds, I never notice anything.