Ester Ried

Slowly, slowly, the night wore away, and the eastern sky grew rosy with the blush of a new morning--the bridal morning! How strangely unreal, how even impossible did it seem to...

Ester stood before her mirror, arranging some disordered braids of hair. She had come up from the dining-room for that purpose. It was just after dinner. The family, with the ad...

"Oh," said Sadie, with a merry toss of her brown curls, "_don't_ waste any more precious breath over me, I beg. I'm an unfortunate case, not worth struggling for. Just let me ha...

"Twenty minutes here for refreshments!" "Passengers for New York take south track!" "New York daily papers here!" "Sweet oranges here!" And amid all these yells of discordant to...

Left to herself, Ester found her train of thought so thoroughly disagreeable that she hastened to rid herself of it, and seized upon the new comer to afford her a substitute.

Ester was dreaming that the old lady on the cars had become a fairy, and that her voice sounded like a silver bell, when she suddenly opened her eyes, and found that it was eith...

Life went swiftly and busily on. With the close of December the blessed daily meetings closed, rather they closed with the first week of the new year, which the church kept as a...

"Yes, he's a minister," Ester repeated, even more decidedly, as, being seated in the swift-moving train, directly behind the old lady and the young gentleman who had become the...

The large church was _very_ full; there seemed not to be another space for a human being. People who were not much given to frequenting the house of God on a week-day evening, h...

"Now I have you all to myself," that young lady said, with a happy smile, as she turned the key on the retreating Maggie and wheeled an ottoman to Ester's side. "Where shall we...

Now the letter which had caused so much trouble in the Ried family, and especially in Ester's heart, was, in one sense, not an ordinary letter. It had been written to Ester's co...

Meanwhile the days moved on; the time fixed for Ester's return home had long passed, and yet she tarried in New York. Abbie clung to her, wanted her for various reasons; and the...

"My!" she said. "Do you know, Ester, it is perfectly delightful to me to lie here and look at you, and remember that I shall not be responsible for those cakes this morning? The...

"Abbie," said Ester, wriggling herself around from before an open trunk, and letting a mass of collars and cuffs slide to the floor in her earnestness, "do you know I think you'...

Well, Mrs. Ried's religion had been of a negative rather than of a positive sort, at least outwardly. She never spoke much of these matters, and Sadie positively did not know wh...

Mrs. Ried laughed. "Not quite; it is about the new boarder. We have room enough for another certainly, and seven dollars a week is quite an item just now. If Ester were at home,...

Be it understood that Dr. Douglass was very much astonished, and not a little disgusted with himself. As he marched defiantly up and down the long piazza he tried to analyze his...

"This is really the most absurd of all your late absurdities," Mrs. Ried was saying, in rather a loud tone, and with a look of dignified disgust bestowed upon Abbie, as Mr. Fost...

They lingered together for a few minutes in the sitting-room, Abbie, Ester, Ralph and Mr. Foster. They had been having a half sad, half merry talk. It was the evening before the...

Over this letter Ester had laughed and cried, and finally settled, as we found her, into quiet thought. When Abbie came in after a little, and nestled on an ottoman in front of...

Ester was in the kitchen trimming off the puffy crusts of endless pies--the old brown calico morning dress, the same huge bib apron which had been through endless similar scrape...

"Mother," said Sadie, appearing in the dining-room one morning, holding Julia by the hand, "did you ever hear of the fish who fell out of the frying-pan into the fire?" Which qu...

But the autumn days were not _all_ bright, and glowing, and glorious. One morning it rained--not a soft, silent, and warm rain, but a gusty, windy, turbulent one; a rain that dr...

She did not look very much as if she were asleep, nor acted as though she expected to get a chance to be very soon. There was no end to the things which she had to do, for the k...

Sadie Ried was the merriest, most thoughtless young creature of sixteen years that ever brightened and bothered a home. Merry from morning until night, with scarcely ever a paus...

The busy, exciting, triumphant day was done. Sadie Ried was no longer a school-girl; she had graduated. And although a dress of the softest, purest white had been substituted fo...

During these weeks Ester had been roused. Sadie was sick; had been sick enough to awaken many anxious fears; sick enough for Ester to discover what a desolate house theirs would...

Alfred and Julia Ried were in the sitting-room, studying their Sabbath-school lessons. Those two were generally to be found together; being twins, they had commenced _life_ toge...