'The Holiday'

A young couple are briefly separated while returning by train from a seaside holiday. On returning home together he is unable to sleep, imagining the breathing of his wife and child as the sound of the sea.

In The Blossoming World (p. 18) Bates quotes a letter in which his editor, Edward Garnett, praises the story (originally called "Once'), saying 'It is beautifully rendered, the woman's absorption in the baby and the man's absorption in both...all is beautifully felt.'

Two holograph manuscripts are listed in the collection of the Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A&M University, USA (https://catalog.library.tamu.e...).

In The New Statesman (January 1, 1927), Day's End and Other Stories (1928), Thirty Tales (1934).