A Houseful of Girls

During the next few weeks the workmen took possession of the Grange, and each morning as Kit made her appearance in the schoolroom Christabel had some fresh item of intelligence...

"I don't know what I am to do with you, child," she cried. "Every time I go away there is a fresh outbreak, and you seem to grow worse instead of better. It is useless to warn y...

It was all over. Ned had gone away, and the diamond ring no longer shone on Lilias's left hand. In a storm of tears and sobs she had declared to her mother that she neither coul...

At the beginning of May the first returning ray of brightness came into Maud's life. A letter arrived from a friend of the family who had been living abroad for her daughter's e...

Alas for Maud! Had it been for this that she had lived in dreams since October last, planning afresh, and yet afresh, every detail of the next meeting with Ned? Had it been for...

"In work, in work, in work alway, let my young days be passed, that I may fade away and die, as I am doing f-ast!" sighed Kitty Maitland one afternoon a month later, as she sat...

"Humph!" remarked Miss Nan to herself the next afternoon, as she watched the lovers pacing the garden walk, "Humph! unless my eyes deceive me, relationships are strained between...

The remaining hours of that day were the most painful which Maud had ever known. The sisters returned to find the household in a state of wild excitement, for such secrets seeme...

Nearly two years had passed by since Lilias had broken off her engagement with Ned Talbot, and Gervase Vanburgh had told Nan of his love, and a stranger passing along the villag...

The next morning at ten o'clock the Italian servant was entrusted with a message from his master which created a wild excitement in the Rendell family. Mr Vanburgh was restored...

On Thursday evening, Mr and Mrs Rendell returned home from their Continental trip. The house was spick and span, the girls were blooming in pretty evening dresses, and the trave...

When Ned Talbot arrived a fortnight later, his face showed that his anxiety had been no imaginary thing. He looked, indeed, so worn and aged, that his friends were shocked to se...

"This way, please, ma'am. Will you come up-stairs?" said the butler; and Nan stumbled blindly forward, past the branching palms, the Indian cabinets, the knight in his glitterin...

After dinner that evening the six girls assembled in the drawing-room, and little Mrs Rendell sat in their midst on a low chair drawn up in the centre of the fireplace. A grey s...

"Forty-three pounds seven and twopence, nearly fifty pounds, my darlings, in solid coin of the realm, and all of our amassing!" cried Nan three hours later, as the last visitor...

Thurston House, the abode of the Rendell family, was one of those curiously-constructed houses which are only to be met with in old- fashioned neighbourhoods. It stood directly...

One bright May morning Mrs Rendell sat by her desk ostensibly busy with accounts, but in reality watching the movements of her daughter Lilias, who lounged on the window seat re...

Two days later, Maud was sitting reading in the drawing-room, when the door opened, the servant pronounced a name which thrilled her with surprise, and, looking up, she beheld N...

After due consultation, Mr and Mrs Rendell decided to sanction a private engagement between Lilias and Ned Talbot for a year to come, with the understanding that if the young pe...

Half an hour later, Nan Rendell let herself out of the front door, and ran hurriedly down the steps. Her sailor hat was perched uncertainly on the top of her heavy braids, the b...

Maud had just time to change her working attire for a dress which was suitable for the evening, though not sufficiently dressy to break the compact which had been made with the...

By no one was the news of Gervase Vanburgh's advent greeted with more enthusiasm than by Lilias herself, for, truth to tell, the day had seemed interminably long in the company...

The news that the Grange was sold was truly of great interest to the Rendell family, for the house faced their own on the opposite side of the road, and its uninhabited conditio...

The next day, when Kitty arrived at Thurston House, she was informed of Ned Talbot's visit, and promptly remarked that it was a "mean shame"-- the shame consisting in the fact o...

After a storm comes a calm. As in Nature, so in the affairs of human life, and the Rendells found another example of the truth of the old adage in the month following Lilias's e...

There were six of them altogether--six great big girls,--and they lived in a great big house, in the middle of a long high road, one end of which loses itself in London town, wh...

"Most improper!" she pronounced it. "You ought to remember, Nan, that you are no longer a child in the schoolroom, and that such an intimacy with a man of Mr Vanburgh's age is s...