Family Books

CHAPTER I. HOME AGAIN It was a clear, apple-green evening in May, and Four Winds Harbour was mirroring back the clouds of the golden west between its softly dark shores. The sea moaned eerily on the sand-bar, sorrowful even in spring, but a sly, jovial wind came piping down the red harbour road along which Miss Cornelia's comfortable, matronly figure was making its way towards the village of Glen... 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... more...

Morning in the Grifoni Palace. Near the banks of the river Arno, in an upper room of the beautiful old palace of the Grifoni family, Beppina, the twelve-year-old daughter of the Marchese, lay peacefully sleeping. In his own room across the hall from hers, Beppo, her twin brother, slept also, though it was already early dawn of Easter Saturday in the city of Florence, and both children had meant to be... more...

Prehistoric Man. This is a story about things that happened ages and ages ago, before any of us were born, or our great-great-grandfathers either, for that matter. It was so very long ago that there were no houses, or farms, or roads from one place to another, and there was not a single city, or a town, or even a village in the whole earth. There was just the great, round world, all fresh and new, and... 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...

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...

Chapter I. "What I want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver of Dorlcote Mill—"what I want is to give Tom a good eddication. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave th' academy at Lady Day. I meant to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. "The two years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough," the miller went on, "if... more...