Summer Writing Contest

Entries for the summer writing contest to produce the best continuation of this new novel can be posted on the blog (if you have posting privileges) or in the comments, and Mary Ann will judge them. There will be prizes if the Tenants can rouse themselves from their hammocks and go into the house to find some.

My entry, which repositions the characters slightly and adds only the second sentence:

"She rushed downstairs to consult Shirley, who at that moment was holding a tete-a-tete with Dick on the sunny front porch."

As yet unaware of Mabel's imminent arrival, Dicky, for his part, was slowly coming to the realization that he seemed to be trapped in yet another of Shirley's famous "tete a tetes" and was finding himself, as was so often the case with Mrs. Murchland, increasingly stupified by Shirley's famously insistent conversational style, which, on this occasion as on so many others, was turning out to be a rather unpleasant blend of the whimsical and the morbid in almost exactly the wrong proportions, not to mention that he had always found the range of her interests to be a bit overly democratic in the sense that, whether the topic was the family of voles that she was certain had taken up residence in her hedgerow or the recent series of suspicious and often near fatal accidents in the vicinity of Crumbleton Manor, everything was treated with the same light, glancing attention before the next conversational bauble was produced in its turn, so that, as he felt the familiar Shirley-induced ennui stealing over him, he could hardly be blamed, he thought, for glancing at the roadster parked at the curb and wondering if he might still be able to disengage himself in time to have tea with the Major at the Athletic Club.