Just as soon as dinner was over at the asylum, Charlotte sped away to the gap in the fence–the northwest corner gap. There was a gap in the southeast corner, too–the asylum fence was in a rather poor condition–but the southeast gap was interesting only after tea, and it was never at any time quite […]

“Come out of doors, master–come out of doors. I can’t talk or think right with walls around me–never could. Let’s go out to the garden.” These were almost the first words I ever heard Abel Armstrong say. He was a member of the board of school trustees in Stillwater, and I had not met him […]

David Hartley had dropped in to pay a neighbourly call on Josephine Elliott. It was well along in the afternoon, and outside, in the clear crispness of a Canadian winter, the long blue shadows from the tall firs behind the house were falling over the snow. It was a frosty day, and all the windows […]

I knew quite well why Father sent me to Prince Edward Island to visit Aunt Philippa that summer. He told me he was sending me there “to learn some sense”; and my stepmother, of whom I was very fond, told me she was sure the sea air would do me a world of good. I […]

The dance at Byron Lyall’s was in full swing. Toff Leclerc, the best fiddler in three counties, was enthroned on the kitchen table and from the glossy brown violin, which his grandfather brought from Grand Pre, was conjuring music which made even stiff old Aunt Phemy want to show her steps. Around the kitchen sat […]

There was a very fine sunset on the night Paul and Miss Trevor first met, and she had lingered on the headland beyond Noel’s Cove to delight in it. The west was splendid in daffodil and rose; away to the north there was a mackerel sky of little fiery golden clouds; and across the water […]

The land dropped abruptly down from the gate, and a thick, shrubby growth of young apple orchard almost hid the little weather-grey house from the road. This was why the young man who opened the sagging gate could not see that it was boarded up, and did not cease his cheerful whistling until he had […]

Mr. Bentley had just driven into the yard with the new summer boarder. Mrs. Bentley and Agnes were peeping at her from behind the parlour curtains with the keen interest that they–shut in by their restricted farm life–always felt in any visitor from the outside world lying beyond their boundary of purple misted hills. Mrs. […]

Jerome Irving had been courting Anne Stockard for fifteen years. He had begun when she was twenty and he was twenty-five, and now that Jerome was forty, and Anne, in a village where everybody knew everybody else’s age, had to own to being thirty-five, the courtship did not seem any nearer a climax than it […]

Robert Reeves looked somewhat curiously at the girl who was waiting on him at his solitary breakfast. He had not seen her before, arriving at his summer boarding house only the preceding night. It was a shabby farmhouse on the inland shore of a large bay that was noted for its tides, and had wonderful […]

Mrs. Major Hill was in her element. This did not often happen, for in the remote prairie town of the Canadian Northwest, where her husband was stationed, there were few opportunities for match-making. And Mrs. Hill was–or believed herself to be–a born matchmaker. Major Hill was in command of the detachment of Northwest Mounted Police […]

Bertha Sutherland hurried home from the post office and climbed the stairs of her boarding-house to her room on the third floor. Her roommate, Grace Maxwell, was sitting on the divan by the window, looking out into the twilight. A year ago Bertha and Grace had come to Dartmouth to attend the Academy, and found […]

When Theodosia Ford married Wesley Brooke after a courtship of three years, everybody concerned was satisfied. There was nothing particularly romantic in either the courtship or marriage. Wesley was a steady, well-meaning, rather slow fellow, comfortably off. He was not at all handsome. But Theodosia was a very pretty girl with the milky colouring of […]

Miss Calista was perplexed. Her nephew, Caleb Cramp, who had been her right-hand man for years and whom she had got well broken into her ways, had gone to the Klondike, leaving her to fill his place with the next best man; but the next best man was slow to appear, and meanwhile Miss Calista […]

I had been reading a ghost story to Mrs. Sefton, and I laid it down at the end with a little shrug of contempt. “What utter nonsense!” I said. Mrs. Sefton nodded abstractedly above her fancywork. “That is. It is a very commonplace story indeed. I don’t believe the spirits of the departed trouble themselves […]

Lilian Mitchell turned into the dry-goods store on Randall Street, just as Esther Miller and Ella Taylor came out. They responded coldly to her greeting and exchanged significant glances as they walked away. Lilian’s pale face crimsoned. She was a tall, slender girl of about seventeen, and dressed in mourning. These girls had been her […]

My trunk was packed and I had arranged with my senior partner–I was the junior member of a law firm–for a month’s vacation. Aunt Lucy had written that her husband had gone on a sea trip and she wished me to superintend the business of his farm and mills in his absence, if I could […]

The fifth heat in the free-for-all was just over. “Lu-Lu” had won, and the crowd on the grand stand and the hangers-on around the track were cheering themselves hoarse. Clear through the noisy clamour shrilled a woman’s cry. “Ah–I have dropped my scorecard.” A man in front of her turned. “I have an extra one, […]

One summer I was attacked by the craze for amateur photography. It became chronic afterwards, and I and my camera have never since been parted. We have had some odd adventures together, and one of the most novel of our experiences was that in which we played the part of chief witness against Ned Brooke. […]

“Will you go to the Cove with me this afternoon?” It was Marian Lesley who asked the question. Esterbrook Elliott unpinned with a masterful touch the delicate cluster of Noisette rosebuds she wore at her throat and transferred them to his buttonhole as he answered courteously: “Certainly. My time, as you know, is entirely at […]