Wednesday, 18 March 2009

Friday's Child

From the journal of Rev. Stanley Sims:

It was a typically balmy Friday morning as I made my weary way back across the frost-encrusted fields from the village, weighted down as I was with a bountiful supply of jam, sugar, tea, milk, scones, and a fresh pack of chilled butter. A hearty breakfast awaited Beckett and I, but behind us lay The Riddle of the Laughing Puppy, and the horrors of that last case still preyed heavily on my mind. O! how those canine chortles haunted my midnight musings! I hoped that our sumptuous spread would prove to be “just what the doctor ordered” (as they say!) and banish such ghosts from memory, so that Beckett and I could settle down to work on Sunday’s sermon.
Thus were my thoughts so directed when I noticed a bundle of mewling rags in the shade of a nearby hedgerow.
“Ho ho!” I thought to myself. “Here’s a fine curiosity!”
Upon closer inspection the rags took on a decidedly queerer hue, for contained within lay the howling form of an abandoned Gypsy Baby!
“Heaven’s above!” I cried aloud. “I must get this Friday’s Child back to the vicarage immediately! If anyone can solve this mystery, it’s Father Beckett!”
And I took up the bundle, and it’s terrible cargo, into my already-laden arms and hastened back home as fast as my clerical legs would take me, hardly daring to suspect the cursed adventure that myself and my good friend Father J. Beckett were about to be plunged headlong into…

To Be Continued...

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