July, 1892.
Father is off to Oxford again, and Mother's gone with him. You know what that means: another day in the care of Uncle Stephen, who is nice but boring, and Aunt Emma, who means well but won't let you do anything fun. Worst of all, it's a Sunday, which means you're sitting very upright in Aunt Emma's parlour, in all your stiff-starched Sunday best, trying to read Uncle Stephen's latest sermon about one of the less-interesting parts of the Bible while Aunt Emma pretends that she wouldn't rather be knitting and Uncle Stephen hides under a pile of Hebrew and Latin and Greek in his study.
Plus, it's gloriously sunny outside, and you can smell the grass from in here. It's just not fair. All the servants have the day off because Uncle Stephen and Aunt Emma don't believe in making people do any real work on Sundays, and you can bet that they -- Janet and Morris and Cookie, each of whom is loads more fun than Uncle Stephen and Aunt Emma put together -- are probably not all cooped up indoors in their Sunday best.
If only there were some way you could escape....
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An Interactive Fiction by Christopher Huang (originally writing as "Virgil Hilts")
Release 3 / Serial number 121213 / Inform 7 build 6G60 (I6/v6.32 lib 6/12N)
(in the armchair)
The parlour is Aunt Emma's domain, and is wonderfully comfortable and cosy on cold winter nights, especially when there's a fire going in the fireplace. On warm summer afternoons, however, it gets stiflingly claustrophobic.
You are ensconced in an armchair near the fireplace. Escape seems most likely either east into the hall or north into the dining room.
From her portrait above the fireplace mantel, Queen Victoria gazes benignly down on the room.
Aunt Emma sits by the window, dutifully reading her Bible.
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