To Charles Prestwich Scott....

“The book is not a novel” is a phrase often in the mouth of critics, who on second thoughts might, perhaps, add with less emphasis, “It does not conform to the common type of novel.” Fortified, howeve...

“Our day is but a finger: bring large cups.” Alcæus...

Amaryllis found the first daffodil flowering by the damask rose, and immediately ran to call her father to come and see it. There are no damask roses now, like there used to be in summer at Coombe Oak...

Presently Amaryllis wandered indoors, and was met in the hall by her mother. “What has he been talking to you about?” she said, angrily. “Don’t listen to him. He will never do any good. Just look at h...

“Forty-folds,” went on the master, “be the best keeping potatoes. Thur be so many new sorts now, but they bean’t no good; they be very good for gentlefolk as doan’t know no better, and poor folk as ca...

This armchair, of old-fashioned make, had lost an arm⁠—the screw remained sticking up, but the woodwork on that side was gone. It had been accidentally broken some ten years since; yet, although he us...

He was not asleep⁠—he was thinking. Sometimes, of course, it happened that slumber was induced by the position in which he placed himself; slumber, however, was not his intent. He liked to rest after ...

Lady-day Fair came round by and by, and Amaryllis, about eleven o’clock in the morning, went down the garden to the end of the orchard, where she could overlook the highway without being seen, and wat...

The crowd began to pass more thickly, when Amaryllis saw a man coming up the road in the opposite direction to that in which the multitude was moving. They were going to the fair; he had his back to i...

The ale being ended, Iden walked with him through the orchard. “Famous wall that,” said John, presently, nodding towards the great red brick wall which adorned that side of the place. “Knowed how to b...

This discordance between her father and mother hurt Amaryllis’ affectionate heart exceedingly. It seemed to be always breaking out all the year round. Of a summer’s eve, when the day’s work among the ...

When Mrs. Iden threw his lardy-cake descent in Iden’s face she alluded to Grandfather Iden’s being a baker and miller, and noted for the manufacture of these articles. A lardy, or larded, cake is a th...

There was one peculiarity in all the books on Grandfather Iden’s shelves, they were all very finely bound in the best style of hand-art, and they all bore somewhere or other a little design of an anci...

Old Grandfather Iden always dined alone in the parlour, with his housekeeper to wait on him; they were just bringing in his food. The family and visitors had their meals in a separate and much more co...

To one, as it were, in the gallery, it was a delight to see her; her sweet cheeks, fresh as the dawn, reddening with suppressed indignation; her young brow bent; her eyes cast down⁠—don’t you think fo...

Amaryllis did not look back as she walked beside her grandfather slowly up the street, or she would have seen the company of relations watching them from the bow-window. Iden went straight through the...

Within there was a gravel path, and glimpses between trees of wide pleasure-grounds. Amaryllis hesitated, and looked back; Iden drew her forward, not noticing her evident disinclination to proceed. If...

The man he had seen at the window was young Raleigh Pamment, the son and heir. He had been sitting in an easy chair, one leg over the arm, busy with a memorandum book, a stump of pencil, and a disorde...

Glancing up from his betting-book, Raleigh caught sight of someone on the lawn, and went to the window to see who it was. It was then that Grandfather Iden raised his great grey hat, and brought it wi...

When he stopped and turned, angry beyond measure, vexation biting deep lines like aquafortis on his broad, good-natured face. “That I should have been such a fool⁠—an infernal blockheaded fool⁠—” shut...

So there was tribulation in three houses. Next morning she scarcely dared come in to breakfast, and opened the door timidly, expecting heavy looks, and to be snapped up if she spoke. Instead of which,...

Right at the top of the house there was a large, unfurnished room, which Amaryllis had taken as her own long since. It was her study, her thinking-room, her private chapel and praying-room, her one pl...

So Amaryllis went up into the gaunt, cold room at the top of the house, and bent herself seriously to drawing. There was no fireplace, and if there had been they could not have allowed her coals; coal...

Steadily they came over from the town, dunning Iden and distracting Amaryllis in her garret. She heard the heavy footsteps on the path to the door, the thump, thump with the fist (there was neither kn...

But his presence did not die out of the kitchen; they always seemed to feel as if he had been there. The hearth had been stained by a foreign foot, the very poker had been touched by a foreign hand, t...

But all these shocks and worries and trampling upon her emotions made the pencil tremble in the artist’s hand as she worked in the gaunt garret. One day, as she was returning from Woolhorton, Iden’s s...

Though the portfolio was pushed aside and dust had gathered on the table, except where her arm touched it, Amaryllis came daily, and often twice a day, to her flowers to pray. From the woods she broug...

They talked on and on, these three, Iden, Amadis Iden, and Alere Flamma, with Amaryllis listening, from the end of April till near the end of May; till “a month passed away,” and still they were talki...

By no possible means could Alere Flamma work himself into a dress coat. The clubs, the houses of the great, the mutual admiration dinners⁠—those great institutions of the day⁠—were all closed to him b...

Perhaps the reason Alere never took to colours was because of his inherent and unswerving truthfulness of character. Genuine to a degree, he could not make believe⁠—could not deceive⁠—could not masque...

Something in Fleet Street holds tight those who once come within its influence. The cerebellum of the world, the “grey matter” of the world’s brain, lies somewhere thereabouts. The thoughts of our tim...

A printer in the office crawled under the bed of the machine to replace something⁠—a nut that had dropped; it was not known that he was there; the crank came round and crushed him against the brickwor...

Some noble physicians have tried the effect of drugs upon themselves in order to advance their art; for this they have received Gold Medals, and are alluded to as Benefactors of Mankind. I have tried ...

“Let me try,” said Amadis, taking the handle of the churn from Jearje. The butter was obstinate, and would not come; it was eleven o’clock in the morning, and still there was the rattle of milk in the...

“You must drink it all⁠—every drop,” said Amaryllis, masterfully, as Amadis lingered over the glass of milk she had brought him. He had but half finished it; she insisted, “Come, drink it all.” Amadis...

Amarillys went outside the court, and waited; Amadis rose and followed her. “Come a little way into the Brook-Field,” she said. They left the apple-bloom behind them, and going down the gravel-path pa...

Reprinted in part from The Academy of April 4th, 1903. ↩...