“Here’s Aunt Susanna, girls,” said Laura who was sitting by the north window–nothing but north light does for Laura who is the artist of our talented family. Each of us has a little pet new-fledged talent which we are faithfully cultivating in the hope that it will amount to something and soar highly some day. […]

At sunset Sidney hurried to her room to take off the soiled and faded cotton dress she had worn while milking. She had milked eight cows and pumped water for the milk-cans afterward in the fag-end of a hot summer day. She did that every night, but tonight she had hurried more than usual because […]

“Who was the man I saw talking to you in the hayfield?” asked Aunt Kate, as Uncle Richard came to dinner. “Bob Marks,” said Uncle Richard briefly. “I’ve sold Laddie to him.” Ernest Hughes, the twelve-year-old orphan boy whom Uncle “boarded and kept” for the chores he did, suddenly stopped eating. “Oh, Mr. Lawson, you’re […]

Fate, in the guise of Mrs. Emory dropping a milk-can on the platform under his open window, awakened Murray that morning. Had not Mrs. Emory dropped that can, he would have slumbered peacefully until his usual hour for rising–a late one, be it admitted, for of all the boarders at Sweetbriar Cottage Murray was the […]

Good afternoon, Nora May. I’m real glad to see you. I’ve been watching you coming down the hill and I hoping you’d turn in at our gate. Going to visit with me this afternoon? That’s good. I’m feeling so happy and delighted and I’ve been hankering for someone to tell it all to. Tell you […]

He stood on the sagging doorstep and looked out on the snowy world. His hands were clasped behind him, and his thin face wore a thoughtful, puzzled look. The door behind him opened jerkingly, and a scowling woman came out with a pan of dishwater in her hand. “Ain’t you gone yet, Bert?” she said […]

It was one of the moist, pleasantly odorous nights of early spring. There was a chill in the evening air, but the grass was growing green in sheltered spots, and Jeffrey Miller had found purple-petalled violets and pink arbutus on the hill that day. Across a valley filled with beech and fir, there was a […]

“It is a dreadful thing to be poor a fortnight before Christmas,” said Clorinda, with the mournful sigh of seventeen years. Aunt Emmy smiled. Aunt Emmy was sixty, and spent the hours she didn’t spend in a bed, on a sofa or in a wheel chair; but Aunt Emmy was never heard to sigh. “I […]

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and all the boarders at Mrs. Plunkett’s were feeling dull and stupid, especially the Normal School girls on the third floor, Cyrilla Blair and Carol Hart and Mary Newton, who were known as The Trio, and shared the big front room together. They were sitting in that front room, […]

Dorinda had been home for a whole wonderful week and the little Pages were beginning to feel acquainted with her. When a girl goes away when she is ten and doesn’t come back until she is fifteen, it is only to be expected that her family should regard her as somewhat of a stranger, especially […]

The Taunton School had closed for the summer holidays. Constance Foster and Miss Channing went down the long, elm-shaded street together, as they generally did, because they happened to board on the same block downtown. Constance was the youngest teacher on the staff, and had charge of the Primary Department. She had taught in Taunton […]

Mary Craig and Sara Reid and Josie Pye had all flocked into Ida Mitchell’s room at their boarding-house to condole with each other because none of them was able to go home for New Year’s. Mary and Josie had been home for Christmas, so they didn’t really feel so badly off. But Ida and Sara […]

The man halted on the crest of the hill and looked sombrely down into the long valley below. It was evening, and although the hills around him were still in the light the valley was already filled with kindly, placid shadows. A wind that blew across it from the misty blue sea beyond was making […]

Jane Lavinia put her precious portfolio down on the table in her room, carefully, as if its contents were fine gold, and proceeded to unpin and take off her second-best hat. When she had gone over to the Whittaker place that afternoon, she had wanted to wear her best hat, but Aunt Rebecca had vetoed […]

The mackerel boats were all at anchor on the fishing grounds; the sea was glassy calm–a pallid blue, save for a chance streak of deeper azure where some stray sea breeze ruffled it. It was about the middle of the afternoon, and intensely warm and breathless. The headlands and coves were blurred by a purple […]

When Millicent Moore and Worth Gordon met each other on the first day of the term in the entrance hall of the Kinglake High School, both girls stopped short, startled. Millicent Moore had never seen Worth Gordon before, but Worth Gordon’s face she had seen every day of her life, looking at her out of […]

“This,” said Sara, laying Aunt Josephina’s letter down on the kitchen table with such energy that in anybody but Sara it must have been said she threw it down, “this is positively the last straw! I have endured all the rest. I have given up my chance of a musical education, when Aunt Nan offered […]

“Phil, I’m getting fearfully hungry. When are we going to strike civilization?” The speaker was my chum, Frank Ward. We were home from our academy for the Christmas holidays and had been amusing ourselves on this sunshiny December afternoon by a tramp through the “back lands,” as the barrens that swept away south behind the […]

We hadn’t been very long in Glenboro before we managed to get acquainted with Miss Ponsonby. It did not come about in the ordinary course of receiving and returning calls, for Miss Ponsonby never called on anybody; neither did we meet her at any of the Glenboro social functions, for Miss Ponsonby never went anywhere […]

“Well, so it’s all settled,” said Stephen Falsom. “Yes,” assented Alexina. “Yes, it is,” she repeated, as if somebody had questioned it. Then Alexina sighed. Whatever “it” was, the fact of its being settled did not seem to bring Alexina any great peace of mind–nor Stephen either, judging from his face, which wore a sort […]