To Frances Brincklerbee...

As she lay floating in the grey river that flows between sleeping and waking, Maggie Campion knew, without remembering why, that it was a happy day. And when she opened her eyes, the sunlight falling ...

Victor Campion met Margaret Southmayd a few years after he graduated from Harvard, when he went to visit her brother Henry, who had been a classmate. There had been guests in his honor on the afternoo...

Nobody could keep away from the parlor, because Papa was there, home again. Old Chloe, in a clean yellow print sprigged with scarlet and a fresh turban, brought eggnog; Albert carried in logs for the ...

One of the cherry trees in the garden was dead, and over it grew a wistaria vine, lavendar-blue, a heaven-colored tent. The long sprays of flowers fell down like a curtain, the light that came through...

The baby wailed and drooped through the heat of his first summer; but, when Mamma cut long sprays of pungent chrysanthemums for the brass vases that stood on the altar to the glory of God and in memor...

“What is thy duty towards thy neighbor?” asked Miss Hessie Farley, brushing a bluebottle fly away from her nose; and the children chorused: “My duty toward my Neighbor is To love him as myself an todo...

Gently the Campions slipped from being rich to being “well-to-do,” from being “well-to-do” to being “comfortable,” and from being “comfortable” to “having to be just a little careful.” Mamma didn’t un...

Each year the pencil marks to show how much the children had grown crept up and up by the side door, like a rising tide. And then Maggie’s stopped rising, and she was a grown-up young lady; though you...

They went to the woods for Christmas greens, jolting along in the farm cart. The pine trees were all plumy and feathery with the snow that came sifting down from a lead-colored sky. The brook was froz...

It was so hot that to breathe was like putting your head under a towel and over the teakettle. The air quivered, the hens lay in the shade, now and then uttering a languid kraw-aw-k, or following with...

Mamma planned to be surprised in the garden, but as the time for Mr. Lacey’s arrival drew near, she grew shy and stayed with the girls on the porch. She wouldn’t let them out of her sight. She felt dr...

Miss Hessie Farley was going to be Airy Fairy Lilian in half a minute, and was in a panic because she couldn’t find her blue scarf and parasol anywhere. Mrs. Farley, who was helping behind the scenes,...

He came on Saturday afternoon long before anyone expected him. Mamma was lying down, May was tying a rose-colored velvet ribbon around her curls, and Maggie, who had been helping Martha preserve straw...

Now that they could only afford to keep Albert outside and Martha in the house, Mamma and the girls had ever so much more to do. They even had to let lame Joseph go. He had swept the porches and limpe...

Even Willie said the new cook was good. When he finished his second cup of coffee and said, “I’ve only had one cup, haven’t I?” Aunt Priscilla was so pleased that she told a story, and said, “Yes, jus...

Edward was coming. Maggie had never been so brisk and cross. How she ordered them about! And she was everywhere⁠—whipping cream for the charlotte russe, shouting to Albert to bring in more firewood, c...

The ladies were stealing a good many glances at the clock beneath the Arab and his prancing steed on Mrs. Leaf’s mantelpiece. Four o’clock⁠—certainly time for coffee and cake if their suppers weren’t ...

Happiness to wake at dawn and lie listening to the birds, to bathe in the crackling copper-lined tub, and go leaping down through the soaking grass to get a brown and yellow pansy all beaded with dew ...

Maggie hung Victor’s dress-suit on the clothesline to get rid of the smell of camphor. He was going to New York to stay at the Fifth Avenue Hotel where Papa had stayed, and to go to Lucy Hawthorn’s ba...

Twice Lucy came to visit the Leafs’, and each time Victor loved her more. He thought of her all the summer, all the autumn, all the winter. Well, not quite all. Not when he was enjoying biscuits like ...

Victor, like Lucy’s ship, went up and down, as his angel’s voice called to him from across the sea that she was missing him so that she nearly died, or that the gentlemen of Ireland were the most awfu...

Ridiculous to feel positively lightheaded with high spirits when one is in the middle thirties⁠—Maggie couldn’t understand it. Yet that was how she did feel. She wanted to go bounding up into the sky,...

While we still feel that we are just entering the sea we look back, and how far we have come! How far away are the seashells and sandcastles of childhood. We can see them, but we can’t go back to them...

Aunt Priscilla trailed across the fields under the soft spring sky, bringing her nieces the latest installment of “Trilby” in Harper’s Magazine. There were sticky circles all over the cover⁠—how had t...

“You mark my words, Lily⁠—Wadsworth Robinson is going to make May an offer, and what’s more, I believe she’s going to take him. Look⁠—he’s really not bad looking⁠—not handsome, but kind of nice⁠—” Lil...

“I suppose it’s a sign a body’s getting old when time goes by so fast,” Maggie thought, putting “Victor⁠—Many Happy Returns” and a border of scallops and dots in pink icing on Victor’s birthday cake. ...

Summer came, and Miss Snaith and Miss Hopper, in piqué skirts, with chatelaine bags hanging from their straining belts, and lingerie waists with high boned collars, whose bones left cruel red marks on...

“Yes, the rooms are lovely and big⁠—but so little closet space! Lovely high ceilings⁠—they must make it a very hard house to heat, don’t they? See, Homer, it would have to be painted all over⁠—see, it...

Fannie Page tilted the side of her face to her husband’s casual kiss, as she went on reading her letters. “Frances says little Francie’s been chosen to be Wild Rose in the school play,” she told him a...

War swept the world. “Oh, if only I could go over and drive an ambulance!” Maggie thought, longing to be in the thick of things, longing to fling out her life in service in the mud, under the star-she...

“Where you going, Maggie?” Lily squatted back on her heels. A small limp pancake of homemade raffia hat, trimmed with rosettes of red raffia topped her mild apple face, every hair pin seemed about to ...

Lily loved the Sunday papers. Lying on the sofa covered like an elderly Babe in the Wood with papers instead of leaves, she read every word about Queen Mary’s toques and Princess Mary Viscountess Lasc...

Lily didn’t really mind getting old. Not that sixty-six was old, but it certainly wasn’t young. Sometimes, when the house was cold and she shivered in spite of her shabby blue sweater, or when her may...