CHAPTER I. I BEGIN LIFE. I was just nineteen years of age when I began my career as articled pupil with the Miss Bagshots of Albury Lodge, Fendale, Yorkshire. My father was a country curate, with a delicate wife and four children, of whom I was the eldest; and I had known from my childhood that the day must come in which I should have to get my own living in almost the only vocation open to a poor... more...

CHAPTER I A DELIGHTFUL MYSTERY "I think we are ready to start, girls." Miss Elting folded the road map that she had been studying and placed it in a pocket of her long dust coat. There was a half-smile on her face, a merry twinkle in her eyes. "Which way do I drive?" questioned Jane McCarthy. "Straight ahead out of the village," answered Miss Elting, the guardian of the party of... more...

CHAPTER I TROUBLE FROM NEAR AND FAR At the corner of High Street, where the lane led back to the stables of the Lake View Inn, Janice Day stopped suddenly, startled by an eruption of sound from around an elbow of the lane—a volley of voices, cat-calls, and ear-splitting whistles which shattered Polktown's usual afternoon somnolence. One youthful imitator expelled a laugh like the bleating of a... more...

CHAPTER I ALL UPSET "There! It's all done, so I guess we can get on and start off! All aboard! Toot! Toot!" Russ Bunker made a noise like a steamboat whistle. "Get on!" he cried. "Oh, wait a minute! I forgot to put the broom in the corner," said Rose, his sister. "I was helping mother sweep, and I forgot to put the broom away. Wait for me, Russ! Don't let the boat... more...

CHAPTER ITHE ARRIVAL "Is this the station, Gran'pa Jim?" inquired a young girl, as the train began to slow up. "I think so, Mary Louise," replied the handsome old gentleman addressed. "It does look very promising, does it?" she continued, glancing eagerly out of the window. "The station? No, my dear; but the station isn't Cragg's Crossing, you know; it is... more...

AN INLAND VOYAGE The morning train from Benton, rumbling and puffing along its way through outlying farmland, and sending its billows of smoke like sea rollers across the pastures, drew up, ten miles from the city, at a little station that overlooked a pond, lying clear and sparkling at the base of some low, wooded hills. An old-fashioned, weather-beaten house, adjacent the station, and displaying a... more...

CHAPTER I LOST Splash! went a big drop just on the exact tip of Laura Jordon’s pretty, rather upturned nose. She put her hand to the drop to be sure she had not been mistaken, then turned in dismay to her companions. “Girls,” she cried, “it’s raining!” If she had said the world was coming to an end her companions could not have looked more startled. Then Billie Bradley cocked an eye at what... more...

CHAPTER I MAINLY ABOUT MYSELFOfcourse every one has heard of the Motor Pirate. No one indeed could help doing so unless he or she, as the case may be, happened to be in some part of the world where newspapers never penetrate; since for months his doings were the theme of every gossip in the country, and his exploits have filled columns of every newspaper from the moment of his first appearance until... more...

CHAPTER I. BIG BEN'S VOICE. Sue made a great effort to push her way to the front of the crowd. The street preacher was talking, and she did not wish to lose a word. She was a small, badly made girl, with a freckled face and hair inclined to red, but her eyes were wonderfully blue and intelligent. She pushed and pressed forward into the thick of the crowd. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and... more...

CHAPTER I BAD NEWS Excited shouts, mingled with laughter, floated on the sunlit and dust-laden air to the ranch house of Diamond X. Now and then, above the yells, could be heard the thudding of the feet of running horses on the dry ground. "What do you reckon those boys are doing, Ma?" asked Nell Merkel as she paused in the act of laying the top crust on a raisin pie. "Land knows,"... more...