(5/20)Over the Gate (27 page)

How right he was, I thought! We do ad need a story, as he said. There is a hunger in us which needs to be assuaged. With what avidity I have listened to my neighbours' accounts of tales of long ago, and with what unfailing curiosity I observe the happenings of today!

Here, around me, are all the folk of Fairacre, both the quick and the dead. The story of the village goes back a long, long time; and it still goes on. Every hour that we live the story unfolds, now tragic, now comical, but always and everlastingly absorbing.

Can you wonder that we are never dull in Fairacre?

M
ISS READ
is the pen name of Mrs. Dora Saint, who was born on April 17, 1913. A teacher by profession, she began writing for several journals after World War II and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, but she is especially beloved for her novels of English rural life set in the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955 by Michael Joseph Ltd. in England and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In 1998 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.