A Fluttered Dovecote

I used to get quite vexed with the tiresome old place, even if it was pretty, and you could sit at your open window and hear the nightingales singing; and even though some other...

I sincerely hope the readers of all this do not expect to find any plot or exciting mystery; because, if they do, they will be most terribly disappointed, since I am not leading...

It was such a relief to know that the Signor was gone, and that, too, without betraying any one. I could see, too, that Achille revived, now that he felt that he was safe for th...

The night before the one appointed for my flight with Achille, I sat down and wrote two letters home--one the usual weekly affair, the other a tear-bedewed prayer for pardon. In...

I had no idea that Achille was well enough to go on with the lessons, neither had anybody in the house; for Miss Furness had just summoned us all to the French class, and my min...

I have often awoke of a morning with the sensation of a heavy, pressing-down weight upon my mental faculties; and so it was after the dreadful catastrophe narrated in the last c...

I suppose it comes natural to people to feel sleepy at night; for I did not mention it before, but I had terribly hard work to keep awake on that night when I had such a horribl...

I don't know what I should have done if it had not fallen to my lot to meet with a girl like Clara Fitzacre, who displayed quite a friendly feeling towards me, making me her con...

We were all in the schoolroom; and first one and then another stiff-backed, new-smelling book was pushed before me, and the odour of them made me feel quite wretched, it was so...

I meant in the last chapter to have told a great deal more; but so many of my troubles and misadventures kept creeping in, that I did not get in one-half of what I intended. Wha...

My spirits rose a little after breakfast the next morning, though I only smiled sadly as I thought of my many disappointments; but we had had a long talk with Patty, and she had...

A day had passed--a long, long, dreary day, and a weary, weary night-- during which I kept on starting up from sleep to think that I heard a voice whispering the word "Come!"

For a few moments after I woke I could not make out what made me feel so heavy and dull. Of course, it was partly owing to their ringing that stupid bell down in the hall so ear...

One long, weary, dreadful drag, but somehow or another time slipped away; though I shudder now when I recall that during that lapse of time I was growing more and more wicked ev...

You will excuse me for a moment? I must take another sheet of paper--I, Laura Bozerne, virgin and martyr, of Chester Square, Belgravia--for that last sheet was all spotted with...

"I can't think how mammas can be so silly as to believe all that is said by these lady principals," said Clara. "And so there's another new girl coming, just my age? I wonder ho...

Bed-time at last, and me there, close shut up in our own room; but not before I had run to the end of the passage and tried the end door to see if it was open; and it was--it wa...

That dreadful man had pronounced me to be decidedly better, and had been and gone for the last time, while I felt quite sorry as I thought of the expense, and of how it would fi...

The first thing that Clara and I did was to tear up the brown paper wrappers into tiny little bits, all but where the directions were written, and those we chewed up quite small...

Night again; and Achille--poor faithful, charitable, patient Achille--to be there once more watching in the dark that one blank window, that he hoped to see open. I could analys...

when I was alone in the garden, which was not often, I used to talk to the old man or one of his underlings, while they told me of their troubles. It is very singular, but thoug...

I wrote and told Achille all my plans, using the top of the drawers for a writing desk, and letting Patty Smith think that I was doing an exercise; for I was so horribly deceitf...

They say that it is natural for women to be weak, and of course they who said so must know best about it. So if woman is naturally weak, I do not think I need be very much asham...

I never saw Achille again, and I never once dared to ask either mamma or papa about his fate; for they were both so kind and tender all the time that I was seriously ill from th...

I declare my progress with my narrative seems for all the world like papa carving a pigeon-pie at a picnic: there were the claws sticking out all in a bunch at the top, as much...