The book starts with Cassandra writing in her journal (a Sixpenny book) with her feet sitting in the kitchen sink, and the rest of her body is her a draining board she had padded with her dog's blanket and an old tea-cozy. As she sits there, she is thinking back on things she had done in strange places, like the time she wrote one of her best poems while sitting in the hen-house, (although even that poem wasn’t very good). In fact, she says her poetry is so bad, that she promised herself she won't write it anymore.
Later on in the book, Miss Marcy decides to drop off some detective novels for Mr. Mortmain, and ends up trying to help the Mortmains think up ways to make a little bit of money. They ended up with a list that looked kind of like this: Earning Capacity for Present Year Mrs. Mortmain nil Cassandra Mortmain nil Thomas Mortmain nil Rose Mortmain nil Mr. Mortmain nil Stephen Colly 25 shillings a week So, with this new way to change the money they make, the Mortmains are fairly pleased, apart from, of course, Mr. Mortmain (as usual). As Cassandra says it: “Father’s expression didn’t change as he read, he went on smiling; but I could feel something happening to him. Rose says I am always crediting people with emotions I should experience myself in their situation, but I am sure I had a real flash of intuition then.” So, with this, Mr. Mortmain grabbed something to eat and went up to his room to finish reading his detective novels.
Much later on in the book, two men end up having their car break down right in front of the castle. While Thomas and Stephen go to King’s Crypt to try and find somebody to help fix up the car, the two men come into the castle to have a look around; unfortunately, Cassandra is taking a bath at this time, so their tour has to come to a pause. When Cassandra comes out of the tub, the two men are surprised at how old she is, because, since she was sitting down in the tub, they thought she was only a very small child. It turns out that the two men are Simon and Neil Cotton, the descendants of a preceding owner of the castle. It turns out that they couldn’t get anyone who could fix the car yet, so the Cottons have to stay a while longer. Just then, Mr. Mortmain walks into the room, happily cursing about the weather conditions, not realizing that the Cottons are standing right there. So, in an effort to lighten up the situation, Topaz proudly blurts: “This is my husband, James Mortmain!”. Just then, Simon Cotton gasps, “But- oh, this is a miracle! You must be the author of Jacob Wrestling.” Right then, Mr. Mortmain had a very surprised and desperate look on his face, but that quickly changed to a very curious stare. He managed to finally reply with, “Why, yes…” Simon Cotton was overjoyed with this, and so they started going on about the book as if they had both just finished reading it.
A bit later on in the book, Cassandra is sitting outside in the barn, writing in her journal, when she sees that the Cottons stopped by earlier than expected. Without any time to tell everyone to hurry up and get ready, she simply sits and watched them enter the house, and, a while later, leave. When they leave, she hears something she wishes she hadn't. She overheard them talking about her family, saying that Simon was lucky to escape with his life, becasue of the way that Rose was acting. They also mentioned that they would have loved to help James, but that it's hard to help a hopeless drunk, and that they wished they had seen Cassandra, though she was very consciously naïve. Upojn hearing this, Cassandra bolted into the house and asked Topaz what Rose had done. It turned out that she was flirting with Simon in a very strange, old-fashioned way. Topaz said that it all would have been "very fetching" about 100 years ago. At the end of this part of the book, the Mortmain family decides to keep moving on and forget about the Cottons, and so that's basically what they do.
*Note: at the end of this part of the book, it said to "SLAM THE BOOK SHUT". I'm not sure why, maybe it's for good luck. If it is, I guess I didn't slam the book hard enough, because I haven't had any incredibly good luck lately. Please try this and tell me if you actually do get any good luck.
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