And the The Welcome back everyone to one thousand one classic short stories entails this is your

host John Hagord it's been a while since we've done a story by Algernon Blackwood and

we have one of his best of short stories called The Olive. This story first appeared in Pearson's magazine in

1922 and it's featured as a selection in the best British short stories of 1922.

Here's a teaser quote.

A laugh is a revealing thing, he thought, as he fell asleep to dream of a lob-sided

olive rolling consciously towards him, and of a girl's eyes that watched its awkward

movements, then looked up into his own, and laughed.

And now our story.

He laughed involuntarily as the olive rolled towards his chair across the shiny parquet floor of the hotel dining room. His table in the cavernous Sala Mange was

apart. He sat alone, a solitary guest. The table from which the olive fell and rolled towards him was some distance away.

The angle, however, made him an unlikely objective.

Yet the lob-sided,, juicy thing, after hesitating once or twice on route as it plopped along,

came to rest finally against his feet.

It settled with an inviting, almost an aggressive air, and he stooped and picked it up, putting

it rather self-consciously, because of the girl from whose table it had come, on a white tablecloth beside his plate. Then looking up he caught

her eye and saw that she too was laughing though not a bit self-consciously. As she helped herself to the hors d'oeuvres, a false move had sent it flying.

She watched him pick the olive up and set it beside his plate. Her eyes then suddenly looked away again at her mother questioningly.

The incident was closed, but the little oblong succulent olive lay beside his plate so that his fingers played with it.

He fingered it automatically from time to time until his lonely meal was finished.

When no one was looking, he slipped it into his pocket as though having taken the trouble to pick it up

This was the very least he could do with it

...