The raw wind of an early May evening was puffing in and out the curtains of the room where Naomi Holland lay dying. The air was moist and chill, but the sick woman would not have the window closed. “I can’t get my breath if you shut everything up so tight,” she said. “Whatever comes, […]

When Sara Currie married Jack Churchill I was broken-hearted…or believed myself to be so, which, in a boy of twenty-two, amounts to pretty much the same thing. Not that I took the world into my confidence; that was never the Douglas way, and I held myself in honor bound to live up to the family […]

Thyra Carewe was waiting for Chester to come home. She sat by the west window of the kitchen, looking out into the gathering of the shadows with the expectant immovability that characterized her. She never twitched or fidgeted. Into whatever she did she put the whole force of her nature. If it was sitting still, […]

The warm June sunshine was coming down through the trees, white with the virginal bloom of apple-blossoms, and through the shining panes, making a tremulous mosaic upon Mrs. Eben Andrews’ spotless kitchen floor. Through the open door, a wind, fragrant from long wanderings over orchards and clover meadows, drifted in, and, from the window, Mrs. […]

The first summer Mr. Irving and Miss Lavendar–Diana and I could never call her anything else, even after she was married–were at Echo Lodge after their marriage, both Diana and I spent a great deal of time with them. We became acquainted with many of the Grafton people whom we had not known before, and […]

Just at dusk, that evening, I had gone upstairs and put on my muslin gown. I had been busy all day attending to the strawberry preserving–for Mary Sloane could not be trusted with that–and I was a little tired, and thought it was hardly worth while to change my dress, especially since there was nobody […]

The Monroe family were holding a Christmas reunion at the old Prince Edward Island homestead at White Sands. It was the first time they had all been together under one roof since the death of their mother, thirty years before. The idea of this Christmas reunion had originated with Edith Monroe the preceding spring, during […]

A man’s heart–aye, and a woman’s, too–should be light in the spring. The spirit of resurrection is abroad, calling the life of the world out of its wintry grave, knocking with radiant fingers at the gates of its tomb. It stirs in human hearts, and makes them glad with the old primal gladness they felt […]

Miss Rosetta Ellis, with her front hair in curl-papers, and her back hair bound with a checked apron, was out in her breezy side yard under the firs, shaking her parlor rugs, when Mr. Nathan Patterson drove in. Miss Rosetta had seen him coming down the long red hill, but she had not supposed he […]

“We must invite your Aunt Jane, of course,” said Mrs. Spencer. Rachel made a protesting movement with her large, white, shapely hands–hands which were so different from the thin, dark, twisted ones folded on the table opposite her. The difference was not caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard […]

It had never worried me in the least that I wasn’t married, although everybody in Avonlea pitied old maids; but it DID worry me, and I frankly confess it, that I had never had a chance to be. Even Nancy, my old nurse and servant, knew that, and pitied me for it. Nancy is an […]

Max always blesses the animal when it is referred to; and I don’t deny that things have worked together for good after all. But when I think of the anguish of mind which Ismay and I underwent on account of that abominable cat, it is not a blessing that arises uppermost in my thoughts. I […]

“Well, I really think Santa Claus has been very good to us all,” said Jean Lawrence, pulling the pins out of her heavy coil of fair hair and letting it ripple over her shoulders. “So do I,” said Nellie Preston as well as she could with a mouthful of chocolates. “Those blessed home folks of […]

“Tomorrow is Christmas,” announced Teddy Grant exultantly, as he sat on the floor struggling manfully with a refractory bootlace that was knotted and tagless and stubbornly refused to go into the eyelets of Teddy’s patched boots. “Ain’t I glad, though. Hurrah!” His mother was washing the breakfast dishes in a dreary, listless sort of way. […]

Sometimes Johnny and I wonder what would really have happened if we had never started for Cousin Pamelia’s wedding. I think that Ted would have come back some time; but Johnny says he doesn’t believe he ever would, and Johnny ought to know, because Johnny’s a boy. Anyhow, he couldn’t have come back for four […]