The Blotting Book by E. F. Benson, Fiction, Mystery & Detective - E F Benson

"Darling mother," he was saying, "I really was frightened as to whether you would mind. I couldn't help remembering how you received Mr. Taynton's proposal that you should go for a drive in his car. Don't you remember, Mr. Taynton? Mother's nose did go in the air. It's no use denying it. So I thought, perhaps, that she wouldn't like my having one. But I wanted it so dreadfully, and so I bought it without telling her, and drove down in it today, which is my birthday, so that she couldn't be too severe." Mr. Taynton, while Morris was speaking, had picked up the nutcrackers the boy had been using, and was gravely exploding the shells of the nuts he had helped himself to. So Morris cracked the next one with a loud bang between his white even teeth. "Dear Morris," said his mother, "how foolish of you. Give Mr. Morris another nutcracker," she added to the parlor-maid. "What's foolish?" asked he, cracking another. "Oh Morris, your teeth," she said.

Edward Frederic "E. F." Benson (1867 - 1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer. Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric, oblique and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories, which were often first published in story magazines such as Pearson's Magazine or Hutchinson's Magazine, 20 of which were illustrated by Edmund Blampied.