Girls & Women Books

CHAPTER I TO THE FRONT "I know it's utterly foolish and unreasonable," sighed Amy Blackford, laying down the novel she had been reading and looking wistfully out of the window, "but I simply can't help it." "What's the matter?" asked Mollie Billette, raising her eyes reluctantly from a book she was devouring and looking vaguely at Amy's profile. "Did you... more...

CHAPTER I Sun and shower—sun and shower—Now rough, now smooth, is the winding way;Thorn and flower—thorn and flower—Which will you gather? Who can say?Wayward hearts, there's a world for your winning,Sorrow and laughter, love or woe:Who can tell in the day's beginningThe paths that your wandering feet shall go? —Mary Macleod. The village choir were practicing in the church—their... more...

A LETTER. School was over, and the holidays were beginning once more, summer holidays, with all their promise of pleasure for dwellers in the country. The scent of sweet new hay was borne on the afternoon breeze, and the broad sunlight lay on fields of waving corn which would soon be ready for the sickle, and on green meadows from which the hay was being carried. Ruth Arnold slowly wended her way... more...

CHAPTER I The elm-tree avenue was all overgrown, the great gate was never unlocked, and the old house had been shut up for several years. Yet voices were heard about the place, the lilacs nodded over the high wall as if they said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole, that it might peep in and see what was going on. If it had... more...

CHAPTER I WELCOME HOME “I do think waiting for a steamer is the horridest, pokiest performance in the world! You never know when they’re coming, no matter how much they sight them and signal them and wireless them!” Mrs. Allen was not pettish, and she spoke half laughingly, but she was wearied with her long wait for the Mauretania, in which she expected her daughter, Nan, and, incidentally, Mr.... more...

CHAPTER I THE DECLINE OF MANCHESTER HOUSE Take a mining townlet like Woodhouse, with a population of ten thousand people, and three generations behind it. This space of three generations argues a certain well-established society. The old "County" has fled from the sight of so much disembowelled coal, to flourish on mineral rights in regions still idyllic. Remains one great and inaccessible... more...

CHAPTER IELLIOTT PLANS AND FATE DISPOSES Now and then the accustomed world turns a somersault; one day it faces you with familiar features, the next it wears a quite unrecognizable countenance. The experience is, of course, nothing new, though it is to be doubted whether it was ever staged so dramatically and on so vast a scale as during the past four years. And no one to whom it happens is ever the... more...

CHAPTER I. OFF FOR JAPAN. "The Motor Maids are off again," announced the West Haven Courier one morning, as if every citizen in the gray old town on the coast was not already well aware of it. The four famous travelers and their chaperone, Miss Helen Campbell, were always off somewhere in the red motor car. If they were not making a voyage to England with the "Comet" stored in the hold... more...

CHAPTER I MISS NOBODY FROM NOWHERE The girls at Higbee School that term had a craze for marking everything they owned with their monograms. Such fads run through schools like the measles. Their clothing, books, tennis rackets, school-bags—everything that was possible—blossomed with monograms, more or less ornate. Of course, some girls’ initials offered a wider scope than others’ for the... more...

CHAPTER I. WARWICK HALL Warwick Hall looked more like an old English castle than a modern boarding-school for girls. Gazing at its high towers and massive portal, one almost expected to see some velvet-clad page or lady-in-waiting come down the many flights of marble steps leading between stately terraces to the river. Even a knight with a gerfalcon on his wrist would not have seemed out of place, and... more...