Moppet

“Sixty-five trays. It takes an hour to do. Thirteen pieces on each tray. Thirteen times sixty-five...eight hundred and forty-five things to collect, lay, square up symmetrically. I make little absurd reflections and arrangements - taking a dislike to the knives because they will not lie still on the polished metal of the tray, but pivot on their shafts, and swing out at angles after my fingers have left them.
I love the long, the dim and lonely, corridor; the light centred in the gleam of the trays, salt-cellars, yellow butters, cylinders of glass...”
― Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates

“Sous un ciel infiniment pur et très haut, dans la lumière douce de la lune, la place de la Concorde paraissait immense et étrange. A cette heure, ce n’était plus un carrefour de Paris, avec son obélisque aux lignes hiératiques, la voie blanche du pont menant à un palais d’architecture grecque, la large avenue des Champs-Élysées fuyant mystérieusement sous la verdure, les terrasses désertes et les jardins silencieux des Tuileries, elle ressemblait à l’agora de quelque ville de rêve sur laquelle planait le sommeil et qui donnait une délicieuse sensation d’immobilité, d’apaisement et de repos.”
― Pierre De Coulevain, Eve victorieuse

“The Mess went vilely tonight. Sister adds up on her fingers, and that's fatal, so all the numbers were out, and the chef sent in forty-five meats instead of fifty-one. I blushed with horror and responsibility, standing there watching six hungry men pretending to be philosophers.
The sergeant wolfed the cheese too. He got it out from under my very eyes while I was clearing the tables and ate it, standing up to it in the pantry with his back to me when I went in to fetch a tray.”
― Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates

“Far down the corridor a slim figure in white approaches, dwarfed by the smoky distance; her nun-like cap floating, her scarlet cape, the "cape of pride," slipped round her narrow shoulders.
How intent and silent They are!
I watched this one pass with a look half reverence, half envy. One should never aspire to know a Sister intimately. They are disappointing people; without candour, without imagination. Yet what a look of personality hangs about them....”
― Enid Bagnold, A Diary Without Dates