Product Description Excerpt: ...towards Moorthorne, and she had deliciously agreed, he was conscious of a tumultuous uplifting and splendid carelessness of spirits. 'Imagine me bringing it to a climax to-day,' he reflected, profoundly pleased with himself. 'Ah well, it will be settled once for all!' He admired his own decision; he was quite struck by it. 'I shall call her May before I leave her,' he thought, gazing at her, and discovering how well the name suited her, with its significances of alertness, geniality, and half-mocking coyness. 'So school is closed,' he said, and added humorously: '"Broken up" is the technical term, I believe.' 'Yes,' she answered, 'and I had walked out into the park to meditate seriously upon the question of my holiday.' She caught his eye in a net of bright glances, and romance was in the air. They had crossed a couple of smoke-soiled fields, and struck into the old Hanbridge road just below the abandoned toll-house with its broad eaves. 'And whither do your meditations point?' he demanded playfully. 159 'My meditations point to Switzerland,' she said. 'I have friends in Lausanne.' The reference to foreign climes impressed him. 'Would that I could go to Switzerland too!' he exclaimed; and privately: 'Now for it! I'm about to begin.' 'Why?' she questioned, with elaborate simplicity. At the moment, as they were passing the toll-house, the other girl appeared surprisingly from round the corner of the toll-house, where the lane from Toft End joins the highroad. This second creature was smaller than Miss Lawton, less assertive, less intelligent, perhaps, but much more beautiful. Everyone halted and everyone blushed. 'May!' the interrupter at length stammered. 'May!' responded Miss Lawton lamely. The other girl was named May too About the Author Enoch Arnold Bennett, the son of a solicitor, was born in Hanley, Staffordshire in 1867. He was educated locally and at London University, before working initially as a solicitor's clerk, but soon turned to writing popular serial fiction and editing a women's magazine. After the publication of his first novel, 'A Man from the North' in 1898 he became a professional writer and some of his best and most enduring and acclaimed work, including 'Anna of the Five Towns', 'The Old Wives' Tale', 'Clayhanger', 'The Card' and 'Hilda Lessways' followed over the next twelve years. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Bennett was invited to join the War Propaganda Bureau, concerned with finding ways of best promoting Britain's interests. He was in good company, as others who contributed to this effort included Conan Doyle, John Masefield, G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Newbolt, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, Gilbert Parker, G. M. Trevelyan and H. G. Wells. Bernard Shaw knew nothing of the Bureau, but attacked what he believed to be jingoistic articles and poems being produced by British writers. Bennett was the one chosen to defend their actions. He served on a War Memorial Committee at the invitation of the then Minister of Information, Lord Beaverbrook, and was also appointed director of British propaganda in France. His spells in Paris added to his reputation as a man of cosmopolitan and discerning tastes. After the War he inevitably returned to writing novels and also became a director of the 'New Statesman'. Bennett's great reputation is built upon the success of his novels and short stories set in the Potteries, an area of north Staffordshire that he recreated as the 'Five Towns'. 'Anna of the Five Towns' and 'The Old Wives' Tale' show the influence of Flaubert, Maupassant and Balzac as Bennett describes provincial life in great detail. Arnold Bennett is an important link between the English novel and European realism. He wrote several plays and lighter works such as 'The Grand Babylon Hotel' and 'The Card'. Arnold Bennett died in 1931.