CHAPTER I THE OPENING TERM "I've got a letter from Peter John." "What's the trouble with him? He ought to have been here yesterday or the day before." "I'm afraid Peter John never'll be on time. He doesn't seem to have taken that in his course. He'd never pass an 'exam' in punctuality." "What does he want?" "The poor chap begs us to meet him at the station." "What train?" "The two-seventeen." "Then we've no time to waste. Is he afraid... more...

CHAPTER I There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons:... more...

A Little Princess 1 Sara Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares. She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of... more...

THE SCHOOL. The house was long and low and rambling. In parts at least it must have been quite a hundred years old, and even the modern portion was not built according to the ideas of the present day, for in 1870 people were not so aesthetic as they are now, and the lines of beauty and grace were not considered all essential to happiness. So even the new part of the house had square rooms destitute of ornament, and the papers were small in... more...

I That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly up the line. Young and careless, in the glow of the afternoon sunshine, they struck a sharp note of incongruity with the worn boards they stood on, with the fading signals and grey eternal walls of that antique station, which, familiar to... more...

A LONG GOOD-BYE. Gathering shadows—Harry's wonder—Ambiguous—A long good-bye—The anchor's weighed. It was a sad evening in the little farm by the church of Wilton, yet very sweet and summer-like without. Very sad it was in the low, dim, oak-panelled parlour, whose diamonded window looked across the quiet churchyard, with its swinging wicket, its gravel-path beneath green aisles of lindens, and all the countless "Grassy... more...

Peters the Susceptible   APER-WEIGHTS," observed Patty, sucking an injured thumb, "were evidently not made for driving in tacks. I wish I had a hammer." This remark called forth no response, and Patty peered down from the top of the step-ladder at her room-mate, who was sitting on the floor dragging sofa-pillows and curtains from a dry-goods box. "Priscilla," she begged, "you aren't doing anything useful. Go down and ask Peters for a... more...

CHAPTER I. CONIC SECTION. It was just after that happy visit of which I told at the end of "WhatKaty Did," that Elsie and John made their famous excursion to ConicSection; an excursion which neither of them ever forgot, and aboutwhich the family teased them for a long time afterward. The summer had been cool; but, as often happens after cool summers, the autumn proved unusually hot. It seemed as if the months had been playing a game, and had... more...

PART FIRST To begin with I wish to disclaim the possession of those high gifts of imagination and expression which would have enabled my pen to create for the reader the personality of the man who called himself, after the Russian custom, Cyril son of Isidor—Kirylo Sidorovitch—Razumov. If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living form they have been smothered out of existence a long time ago under a wilderness of words.... more...

Who shot the Dog? A shot! a yell! silence! Such, as soon as I could collect myself sufficiently to form an idea at all, were my midnight sensations as I sat up in my bed, with my chin on my knees, my hair on end, my body bedewed with cold perspiration, and my limbs trembling from the tips of my fingers to the points of my toes. I had been peacefully dreaming—something about an automatic machine into which you might drop a Latin exercise... more...