In the blazing heat of a July afternoon, Mrs. Cyrus Austin Phelps, of Boston, arrived unexpectedly at the Yerba Buena rancho in California. She was the only passenger to leave the train at the little sun-burned platform that served as a station, and found not even a freight agent there, of whom to ask the […]

In the sunny morning-room there prevailed an atmosphere of business. Rosemary, at the desk, was rapidly writing notes and addressing envelopes. Theodore, a deep wrinkle crossing his forehead, was struggling to reduce to order a confused heap of crumpled and illegible papers. Before him lay little heaps of silver and small gold, which he moved […]

“Well, I am discovered–and lost.” Julie, lazily making the announcement after a long silence, shut her magazine with a sigh of sleepy content; and braced herself more comfortably against the old rowboat that was half buried in sand at her back. She turned as she spoke to smile at the woman near her, a frail, […]

After the meat course, Mrs. Tolley and Min rather languidly removed the main platters and, by reaching backward, piled the dinner plates on the shining new oak sideboard. Thus room was made for the salad, which was always mantled in tepid mayonnaise, whether it was sliced tomatoes, or potatoes, or asparagus. After the salad there […]

Sometimes Ferdie’s jokes were successful; sometimes they were not. This was one of the jokes that didn’t succeed; but as it led to a chain of circumstances that proved eminently satisfactory, Ferdie’s wife praised him as highly for his share in it as if he really had done something rather meritorious. At the time it […]

Through the tremulous beauty of the California woods, in the silent April afternoon, came Sammy Peneyre, riding Clown. The horse chose his own way on the corduroy road, for the rider was lost in dreams. Clown was a lean old dapple gray so far advanced in years and ailments that when Doctor Peneyre had bought […]

“For mercy’s sakes, here comes Shandon Waters!” said Jane Dinwoodie, of the post-office, leaving her pigeonholes to peer through the one small window of that unpretentious building. “Mother, here’s Shandon Waters driving into town with the baby!” breathed pretty Mary Dickey, putting an awed face into the sitting-room. “I declare that looks terrible like Shandon!” […]

I “Well, he has done it now, confound his nerve!” said Anthony Fox, Sr., in a tone of almost triumphant fury. He spread the loosely written sheets of a long letter on the breakfast table. “Here I am, just out of a sick-bed!” he pursued fretfully; “just home from a month’s idling abroad, and now […]

Duncan Coppered felt that his father’s second marriage was a great mistake. He never said so; that would not have been Duncan’s way. But he had a little manner of discreetly compressing his lips, when, the second Mrs. Coppered was mentioned, eying his irreproachable boots, and raising his handsome brows, that was felt to be […]

At the head of her own breakfast table,–a breakfast table charmingly littered with dark-blue china and shining glass, and made springlike by a great bowl of daisies,–Mary Venable sat alone, trying to read her letters through a bitter blur of tears. She was not interested in her letters, but something must be done, she thought […]

A blazing afternoon of mid-July lay warmly over the old Carolan house, and over the dusty, neglected gardens that enclosed it. The heavy wooden railing of the porch, half smothered in dry vines, was hot to the touch, as were the brick walks that wound between parched lawns and the ruins of old flowerbeds. The […]

“You look glorious. What’s the special programme you’ve laid out for this morning, Sue?” said Susanna’s husband, coming upon her in her rose garden early on a certain perfect October morning. “I FEEL glorious too” young Mrs. Fairfax said, returning his kiss and dropping basket and scissors to bestow all her attention upon his buttonhole […]

“NEW white dress, is it?” said Mrs. Costello in bland surprise. “Well, my, my, my! You’ll have Dad and me in the poorhouse!” She had been knitting a pink and white jacket for somebody’s baby, but now she put it into the silk bag on her knee, dropped it on the floor, and with one […]

A capped and aproned maid, with a martyred expression, had twice sounded the dinner-bell in the stately halls of Costello, before any member of the family saw fit to respond to it. Then they all came at once, with a sudden pounding of young feet on the stairs, an uproar of young voices, and much […]

“What are you going to wear to-night in case you CAN go, Mary Bell?” said Ellen Brewster in her lowest tones. “Come upstairs and I’ll show you,” said Mary Bell Barber, glancing, as they tiptoed out of the room, toward the kitchen’s sunny big west window, where the invalid mother lay in uneasy slumber. “My […]

The rain had stopped; and after long days of downpour, there seemed at last to be a definite change. Anne Warriner, standing at one of the dining-room windows, with the tiny Virginia in her arms, could find a decided brightening in the western sky. Roofs–the roofs that made a steep sky-line above the hills of […]

I “You and I have been married nearly seven years,” Margaret Kirby reflected bitterly, “and I suppose we are as near hating each other as two civilized people ever were!” She did not say it aloud. The Kirbys had long ago given up any discussion of their attitude to each other. But as the thought […]

“If only my poor child had a sensible mother,” said Mrs. Tressady, calmly, “I suppose we would get Big Hong’s ‘carshen’ for him, and that would do perfectly! But I will not have a Chinese man for Timothy’s nurse! It seems all wrong, somehow.” “Big Hong hasn’t got a female cousin, I suppose?” said Timothy’s […]