PART ONEMARGERY was sitting under the cherry tree with a certain air of expectancy. She seemed to be waiting for something or some one. Willie Jones's head popped over the back fence and Willie Jones himself, a tin pail in one hand, dropped into the Blair yard and made for the cherry tree. But Margery still gazed earnestly, tensely, into nothing. Willie Jones, evidently, was not the object of her... more...

CHAPTER I. KEEPING SECRETS. We might begin this story of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen angel called the Christ-child. And it is just as well to date... more...

THE LITTLE REGIMENT I The fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seem of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick ranks, and blended in an undertoned... more...

CHAPTER 1.—Early Recollections. In my early recollection Chelsea had many industries characteristic of the village, which have entirely passed away.  The only conveyance—a two-horse stage coach, called the “Village Clock”—used to run from the Cross Keys, in Lawrence Street, twice a day, for one shilling to Charing Cross, and one-and-six pence to the City.  It would stop to change horses at... more...

CHAPTER ONE In which the curtain rises on the Candy Wagon, and the leading characters are thrown together in a perfectly logical manner by Fate. The Candy Wagon stood in its accustomed place on the Y.M.C.A. corner. The season was late October, and the leaves from the old sycamores, in league with the east wind, after waging a merry war with the janitor all morning, had swept, a triumphant host, across... more...

TheCourt Chaplain Eisenhart walked up the village street towards the schoolhouse. It was April, in the year 1750, and a soft west wind was blowing up the street, across the oak woods of the near forest. Between the forest and the village lay a valley of meadows, planted with thorn bushes and old birch trees with snow-white stems: the fresh green leaves trembled continually in the restless wind. On the... more...

CHAPTER I. Early one May morning, Fred Symmes was sent by his mother upon an errand to the next farm. He did not go around by the road, but jumped over the stone wall, and passed along through the pleasant orchard. As he came near the pear tree, he saw a large robin flying back and forth from it, and stopping to look, soon discovered a nest in the fork formed by two of the lower limbs. What was his... more...

CHAPTER I A quaint old Japanese garden lay smiling under the sunshine of a morning in early spring. The sun, having flooded the outside world with dazzling light, seemed to sink to a tender radiance as it wooed leaf and bud into new life and loveliness. It loosened the tiny rivulet from the icy fingers of winter, and sped it merrily on its way to a miniature lake, where shining goldfish darted here and... more...

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LITTLE SAINT ELIZABETH She had not been brought up in America at all. She had been born in France, in a beautiful chateau, and she had been born heiress to a great fortune, but, nevertheless, just now she felt as if she was very poor, indeed. And yet her home was in one of the most splendid houses in New York. She had a lovely suite of apartments of her own, though she was only eleven years old. She... more...