A Woman Named Smith

When the fine weather had taken the kinks out of Judge Gatchell's joints, he came to see us--a tall, thin, punctilious, saturnine old gentleman with frosty Scotch eyes and the c...

Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, with an uplift of his fine black brows and a satirical smile, once diagnosed the case of Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett as "congenital Hyndsitis"; Doctor R...

"Is it--murder?" It seemed to me that the still room shook and echoed to the barely whispered word, that the candles stirred and flickered as in a wind of passing wings.

"My faith, but I'm glad you're entirely well again, Sophy!" wrote The Author, in his small, fine, hypercritical script. "You make the world a pleasanter place by being alive in...

Coming to investigate. Won't sleep in anything but pineapple bed; won't sit in anything but carved chair; can't pray without prie-dieu. If spurious will publicly gibbet you and...

We gave over the futile search at last. Mr. Jelnik sat down and took his head in his hands, for the moment a prey to overwhelming disappointment. I could have wept for him. Pres...

I had seen Alicia whirl away in the Meades' big car. I had seen the Westmacotes and Miss Emmeline off on what they termed a nature-hunt. The Author and his secretary were up to...

We had wired Judge Gatchell when to expect us, but the venerable negro hackman who was on the lookout for us explained that the judge had a "misery in the laigs" which confined...

"Have done with this nonsense!" he ordered sharply. "Alicia, get Sophy home; she looks more dead than alive. Jelnik, your declaration puts a new complexion on this affair; but l...

When we went over Hynds House the next morning and took stock, I began to entertain very, very peculiar feelings toward Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett, who, it would appear, ha...

The Author closed the door and leaned against it. His piercing glance jumped from Nicholas Jelnik's face to mine, with a prolonged and savage scrutiny. No detail of my appearanc...

Alicia insisted that we were living in a fairy-story, and had better enjoy every shining minute while it lasted. But, as I pointed out, the cost of restoring Hynds House was app...

"And what, then, is _this_?" I asked ironically, and rustled my skirts. For the Westmacotes were to arrive that night, in time for dinner, and I, standing before the mirror in m...

Somewhere, far, far off, a faint and feeble little light glimmered, one small point of light in vast blackness. In the whole universe there wasn't anything or anybody but just t...

Just before he went back North, Luis Morenas good-naturedly agreed to exhibit his new sketches for the delectation of such folk as we cared to ask to view them--this to please A...

I stood staring at the broken coin in my hand with a sort of stupefaction, while The Jinnee moved slowly away from the window. I had received a summons I could not ignore. Had I...

I wasn't frightened, of course. There isn't anything terrifying in finding a little old leather-covered book on a prie-dieu by one's bedside. But it was some minutes before I co...

Judge Gatchell's nephews and nieces, brought by that punctilious gentleman to call upon Miss Alicia Gaines, found her enchanting and cried it to the circumambient air. It was as...

Mrs. Cheshire Scarboro was far from the fool her cousin Sophronisba had credited her with being. She had sufficient cleverness to understand that Hyndsville wasn't big enough to...

If it had been humanly possible for Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett to lug her place in Hyndsville, South Carolina, along with her into the next world, plump it squarely in the...