Sentence The Seventeenth

After Daphne and Maude – with interjections from Roxy – had quickly and concisely related to Ginger and Leigh the events which had befallen them that morning, they all felt like a secret cabal, a junto not conspiring to install a junta (which form of military dictatorship was anathema to this little group of committed democrats) Leigh asked – very pointedly and matter-of-factly, which was the style of this tireless woman, often portrayed in the capitalist press as a Stakhanovite Garden Gnome – how exactly the evidence of Sister Evadne Eglantine's torture and death at the hands of minions working for Sir Parlane MacFarlane hundreds of years ago had such a significant bearing on the present day (this particular present day, she elaborated, with a gathering gesture of her arms which encompassed the whole of Scotland and not just their particular Bench in Princes Street Gardens) and was answered by the BOOM of the One-o-Clock Gun high in the battlements of Edinburgh Castle 

 

looming over them; they all jumped, having forgotten the time and so failed to fulfil the fundamental requirement of true Edinburghers by anticipating the cannonade and therefore demonstrating their complete mastery of their features in defiance of the overhead explosion, and fell about laughing at themselves; “It will take more than one sentence to explain succinctly,” replied Daphne, reassuming mastery of her gravitas, for it's too complicated for an epigram and not wanting to cloak it in the shrouds of bafflegab, I must needs take a middle course and therefore, if, Dear Maude, and Delightful Nieces Three, we repair to an adjacent Tea-room, I shall tell you all – bearing in mind that you, Young Ladies, should be out on the Hustings, for if I am not very much mistaken, your Date With Destiny fast approaches, and I hear already the Clarions announcing the Countdown to Polling Day, so Hie We to Afternoon Tea and I will attempt to tell all!”