Betty's Virginia Christmas

It was not much after seven o'clock, but early hours are kept in the country, and there was a six-mile drive between Holly Lodge and Marrowbone. Betty enjoyed the drive, inhalin...

The Colonel was playing on his violin as Betty entered the sitting-room, and what he had chosen was the sad old air of "Love Not, Love Not, Ye Hapless Sons of Men." He laid down...

As the sunny autumn succeeded the enchanted summer, it seemed to Betty as if a new and lovely light were over the world. Fortescue's letters, his constant gifts, the books which...

The Christmas sun was shining brilliantly, and it was not so desperately cold as the day before. Betty had hopes that the thin skim of snow would melt, so that the scent would l...

The Colonel started up and Uncle Cesar rushed in from the hall, followed by Aunt Tulip from the kitchen. Betty managed to disengage her skirts from the spurs of the young office...

Lodge. She had brought with her from Rosehill many rosebushes and a bed of cowslips and violets. With a garden trowel in her hand, her skirts pinned up, and a red Tam o'Shanter...

It was, on the whole, a happy, though solitary winter, and a very comfortable one to others at Holly Lodge, besides Betty. The comfort was to a great degree brought about by Ket...

Then began the St. Martin's summer of an old man's life. Every day the Colonel saw Betty, and every day Fortescue performed some act of kindness or attention to the old people a...

It was as cold as Christmas, and Christmas Eve it was. A thin crust of snow lay over the level landscape of lower Virginia, and the declining sun cast a lovely rose-red light up...

It was now after ten o'clock, and, although they had ridden a good fifteen miles, much of it had been in a circle, and they were not more than five miles from Bendover. Sally Ca...

Up to that point, life had been the simplest of propositions to Betty Beverley, but from that day it became painfully complex. She had thought but little and spoken less of the...

The summer slipped into the autumn, and the gold and brown and crimson October days, with twilight skies of amethyst and pearl, were at hand. Betty's hours were very full. The C...

Beginning with Christmas Eve, there was a party every night for Betty, and as wind and weather count for nothing where merry young people are concerned, Betty prepared to go, in...

"And you must not worry, Grandfather, about my leaving you," she said, "because Jack has said that he will leave all that to me, and we can find a way, depend upon it."

When Fortescue saw the thin cloud of smoke curling upward from the roof of Holly Lodge, he sprang up, and, still in his evening clothes and dancing pumps, ran downstairs, ringin...

"That chile," said Aunt Tulip, "went an' hide hisself as soon as he got offen Mr. Fortescue's hoss, an' when I went to hunt fur him, if you believe me, Miss Betty, I foun' him w...

Meanwhile, things had happened at Holly Lodge. The Colonel had taken out his violin and played dreamily the old airs, von Weber's "Last Waltz," "Love Not," and "Bygone Hours." A...

Betty watched Fortescue as he galloped along the road that lay through the open fields to Rosehill. The vision of the Christmas hunt grew bright. She would see Sally Carteret th...

Gradually the little house at Holly Lodge assumed its usual aspect. The Colonel and Betty were flooded with offers of hospitality and with all sorts of services--those kindly ac...

Some arrangements had to be made immediately for the family at Holly Lodge. It was found that, although the roof of the kitchen was burned off and the roof over Betty's room was...

There was not much money at Holly Lodge, but Christmas dinners were ridiculously cheap, and some of earth's choicest products lay almost at the door of the little house. Fortesc...

The spring came on apace, but instead of bringing with it the joy of the springtime, an atmosphere of settled sadness seemed to descend upon the little house at Holly Lodge, whe...

The Christmas festivities closed with a bang, the visitors departed, and the county settled down to dullness between the new year and the springtime. Those of the young people w...

The winter slipped away, and in April the little camp was to be formed, and the officers were to remain for a couple of months. The thought of seeing Fortescue again, brought th...