A Servant of the Public

The social birth of a family, united by a chain of parallel events with the commercial development of a business, is a spectacle strange to no country but most common among the...

It was an indication of the changed character of the business that the big block in Buckingham Palace Road closed early on Saturdays, surrendering the hours in which the branche...

He did not dispute the point. A man who wants to make love, but is withheld by the sense that he ought not, is at his dullest. Bowdon's state was this or even worse. Ora was a f...

For some days back Irene Kilnorton had been finding it difficult to have amiable thoughts about Ora. That they are attractive, that they make a change where they come, that they...

When Ashley Mead called for her at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning Miss Pinsent was not dressed. When she made her appearance at a quarter to twelve she was rather peevish; her...

Few things make the natural man, a being who still occupies a large apartment in the soul of each of us, more impatient than to find people refusing to conform to his idea of th...

When Alice Muddock reached Ora's little house in Chelsea and was shewn into the drawing-room, she found herself enjoying an introduction to Mr. Sidney Hazlewood and forced to sh...

Ashley Mead did not take the week's consideration which Sir James had pressed on him. The same evening he wrote a letter decisively declining to assume a place at the helm in Bu...

The words in which Ora declared her intention of recalling Jack Fenning to her side and of taking up again the burden of married life sounded like the statement of a firm, unalt...

Irene Kilnorton was in a state of pardonable irritation; just now she often inclined to irritation, but the immediate cause of this fit and its sufficient excuse lay in Babba Fl...

There was one aspect of the renunciation on which Ora had the tact not to dwell in conversation with her faithful ally; it was, however, an added source of comfort to herself, a...

The next few days were critical for the renunciation, and consequently for the reformation which was to accompany it. In the first place, Jack Fenning was now very near; secondl...

The fast train, by which they ought to travel, left for London in a quarter of an hour; a slow train would follow twenty minutes later. Ashley procured this information before u...

Irene Kilnorton looked, as she had been bidden, out of the window in Queen's Gate and perceived a four-wheeled cab laden with three large boxes; from that sight she turned her e...

Kensington Palace Gardens, whither Ashley Mead hastened early on Tuesday morning, was not the same place to him as it had been. The change went deeper than any mere shadow of il...

For Ora Pinsent the clouds were scattered, the heavens were bright again, the sun shone. The dread which had grown so acute was removed, the necessity for losing what had come t...

To Irene Kilnorton, occupied with the matter against her will and in face of self-contempt, the non-appearance of Jack Fenning was a source of renewed irritation and uneasiness....

Babba Flint's dramatic masterpiece progressed and took shape rapidly. "The beggar's got at it at last," Babba said, in one of his infrequent references to the author. Mr. Hazlew...

On the whole Irene Bowdon felt that she ought to thank heaven, not perhaps in any rapturous outpouring of tremulous joy, but in a sober give-and-take spirit which set possible e...

It may safely be said that, had Bowdon's wife been such as Ora Pinsent, or Bowdon himself of the clay of which Ora was made, the foregoing conversation would not have stopped wh...

The bargain was struck, the agreement made, the contract punctiliously signed by all the parties, and witnessed by Janet the maid. There were two copies; Mr. Hazlewood had one,...

Elisha wore worthily the mantle of Elijah; nay, there were fresh vigour and a new genius in the management of Muddock and Mead. The turn-over grew, the percentage of working exp...

By reason of the Government's blunders or of the Opposition's factiousness--the point awaits the decision of a candid historian in case he should deem it worth his attention--Pa...

"One unbroken round of triumph from the hour we landed to the hour we left," said Babba Flint. He was off duty, had dined well, and come on to Mrs. Pocklington's rather late; al...