Family Books

CHAPTER I 'HASTE TO THE WEDDING' 'Wooed and married and a'.' 'Edith!' said Margaret, gently, 'Edith!' But, as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in Harley Street, looking very lovely in her white muslin and blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been dressed in white muslin and blue ribbons,... more...

WHO IS SHE? "Tom, who was that girl you were so taken with last night?" "Wasn't particularly taken last night with anybody." Which practical falsehood the gentleman escaped from by a mental reservation, saying to himself that it was not last night that he was "taken." "I mean the girl you had so much to do with. Come, Tom!" "I hadn't much to do with her. I... more...

The Hunters. It was on a cold winter morning long ago, that Robin Gore, a bold hunter of the backwoods of America, entered his parlour and sat him down to breakfast. Robin’s parlour was also his dining-room, and his drawing-room, besides being his bedroom and his kitchen. In fact, it was the only room in his wooden hut, except a small apartment, opening off it, which was a workshop and lumber-room.... more...

CHAPTER I. A STARTLING DISCOVERY. Miss Merivale had not been paying much heed to the eager talk that was going on between Rose and Pauline Smythe at the window. The long drive from Woodcote had made her head ache, and she was drowsily wishing that Miss Smythe would get her the cup of tea she had promised, when the sound of a name made her suddenly sit bolt upright, her kind old face full of anxious... more...

CHAPTER I Motherless In the East End of London, more than a mile from St Paul's Cathedral, and lying near to the docks, there is a tangled knot of narrow streets and lanes, crossing and running into one another, with blind alleys and courts leading out of them, and low arched passages, and dark gullies, and unsuspected slums, hiding away at the back of the narrowest streets; forming altogether... more...

CHAPTER I A QUEER HUNT "Let me count noses now, to see if you're all here," said Mother Bunker with a laugh, as her flock of children gathered around her. "Don't you want some help?" asked Grandma Bell. "Can you count so many boys and girls all alone, Amy?" "Oh, I think so," answered Mother Bunker. "You see I am used to it. I count them every time we come... more...

THE WRECK. llie had been swinging for nearly an hour in the grove behind the old farm-house, when she heard her mother's voice calling, "Ollie, Ollie! where are you, child?" Ollie stopped swinging and listened. "That is mamma," she said; "I must run quickly and see what she wants." So, jumping down and leaving the swing to "die away" by itself, she skipped along the... more...

FINDING THE NEW HOME The late afternoon sunshine sent its slanting, golden rays through the car windows on to the map that Mary Jane and her sister Alice had spread out on the table between the seats of the Pullman in which they were riding. “And all that wiggly line is water?” Mary Jane was asking. “Every bit water,” replied their father, who bent over their heads to explain what they were... more...

IN THE ARK "Oh, Bunny! Here comes Bunker Blue!" "Where is he? I don't see him!" Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were playing on the shady side porch of their house one morning, when the little girl, looking up from a cracker box which had been made into a bed—where she was putting her doll to sleep—saw a tall boy walking up the path. "There's Bunker!" went on Sue to... more...

CHAPTER I. WHEN one has a good tale to tell, he should try to be brief, and not say more than he can help ere he makes a fair start; so I shall not say a word of what took place on board the ship till we had been six days in a storm. The barque had gone far out of her true course, and no one on board knew where we were. The masts lay in splints on the deck, a leak in the side of the ship let more in... more...