CHAPTER I It was the day of the private view at the Royal Academy. The great courtyard of Burlington House was full of carriages, and a continuous stream of guests was pressing up the red-carpeted stairs, over which presided some of the most imposing individuals known to the eyes of Londoners, second only to Her Majesty's beefeaters in glory of scarlet apparel. Inside, however, as it was not yet luncheon-time, the rooms were but moderately... more...

CHAPTER I Making Plans   “Milly, come down! come down directly! Mother wants you. Do make haste!” “I’m just coming, Olly. Don’t stamp so. Nurse is tying my sash.” But Master Olly went on stamping, and jumping up and down stairs, as his way was when he was very much excited, till Milly appeared. Presently down she came, a sober fair-haired little maiden, with blue eyes and a turn-up nose, and a mouth... more...

PART I CHAPTER I "A stifling hot day!" General Hobson lifted his hat and mopped his forehead indignantly. "What on earth this place can be like in June I can't conceive! The tenth of April, and I'll be bound the thermometer's somewhere near eighty in the shade. You never find the English climate playing you these tricks." Roger Barnes looked at his uncle with amusement. "Don't you like heat, Uncle Archie? Ah, but I forgot, it's American... more...

CHAPTER I. "The mists—and the sun—and the first streaks of yellow in the beeches—beautiful!—beautiful!" And with a long breath of delight Marcella Boyce threw herself on her knees by the window she had just opened, and, propping her face upon her hands, devoured the scene, before her with that passionate intensity of pleasure which had been her gift and heritage through life. She looked out upon a broad and level lawn,... more...

I "Hullo! No!--Yes!--upon my soul, it is Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear fellow, how are you?" So saying--on a February evening a good many years ago--an elderly gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab, which had just stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily went to meet a young man who was at the same moment stepping out of another hansom a little farther down the pavement. The pleasure in the older man's voice... more...

CHAPTER I "I call this part of the line beastly depressing." The speaker tossed his cigarette-end away as he spoke. It fell on the railway line, and the tiny smoke from it curled up for a moment against the heavy background of spruce as the train receded. "All the same, this is going to be one of the most exciting parts of Canada before long," said Lady Merton, looking up from her guide-book. "I can tell you all about it." "For heaven's... more...

CHAPTER I "Well, now we've done all we can, and all I mean to do," said Alice Hooper, with a pettish accent of fatigue. "Everything's perfectly comfortable, and if she doesn't like it, we can't help it. I don't know why we make such a fuss." The speaker threw herself with a gesture of fatigue into a dilapidated basket-chair that offered itself. It was a spring day, and the windows of the old schoolroom in which she and her sister were sitting... more...

CHAPTER I "I don't care a hang about the Middle Classes!" said Lord Buntingford, resting his head on his hand, and slowly drawing a pen over a printed sheet that lay before him. The sheet was headed "Middle Class Defence League," and was an appeal to whom it might concern to join the founders of the League in an attempt to curb the growing rapacity of the working-classes. "Why should we be snuffed out without a struggle?" said the circular. "We... more...

CHAPTER II. "Look out there! For God's sake, go to your places!" The cry of the foreman reached the ears of the clinging women. They fell apart—each peering into the crowd and the tumult. Mounted on a block of wood about a dozen yards from them—waving his arm and shouting to the stream of panic-stricken workmen—they saw the man who had been their guide through the works. Four white-hot ingots, just uncovered, blazed deserted... more...

I Two old labourers came out of the lane leading to Great End Farm. Both carried bags slung on sticks over their shoulders. One, the eldest and tallest, was a handsome fellow, with regular features and a delicately humorous mouth. His stoop and his slouching gait, the gray locks also, which straggled from under his broad hat, showed him an old man—probably very near his old-age pension. But he carried still with him a look of youth, and he... more...