Backwater

When Miriam sat talking everything over with the Pernes at supper, on the first night of the term, detached for ever from the things that engrossed them, the school-work, Julia...

Miriam propped “The Story of Adèle” open against the three Bibles on the dressing-table. It would be wasteful to read it upstairs. It was the only story-book amongst the rows of...

Piecemeal statements in her letter home brought Miriam now and again a momentary sense of developing activities, but she did not recognise the completeness of the change in her...

The quintets of candles on the girandoles hanging on either side of the high overmantel gave out an unflickering radiance, and in the centre of the large room the chandelier, pu...

Miriam looked leisurely at the man walking at her side along the grass-covered cliff; his well-knit frame, his well-cut blue serge, the trimness of collar and tie, his faintly b...

Wheezing, cook had spread a plaster of dampened ashy cinders upon the basement schoolroom fire and gone bonily away across the oilcloth in her heelless boots. As the door closed...

A swarthy turbaned face shone at Miriam from a tapestry screen standing between her and the ferns rising from a basket framework in the bow of the window. Consulting it at inter...

Harriett’s ringed fingers had finished dipping and drying the blue and white tea-service. She sat for a moment staring ahead down-stream. Sitting opposite her, Gerald watched he...

Miriam felt very proud of tall Miss Perne when she met her in the hall at the beginning of her second term. Miss Perne had kissed her and held one of her hands in two small welc...

The Henderson party found Mr. Green and Mr. Parrow waiting in the dim plank-floored corridor leading from the station to the main building of the Crystal Palace. When the quiet...