Good Old Anna

Rose Otway sat in the garden of the Trellis House, under the wide-branched cedar of Lebanon which was, to the thinking of most people in the Close, that garden's only beauty. Fo...

Early that afternoon, after her mother had left the Trellis House, Rose went upstairs to her own room. She had been working very hard all that morning, helping to give some last...

As she walked along, looking neither to the right nor to the left, for she had of late become unpleasantly conscious of her alien nationality, she pondered with astonishment and...

It was Saturday in the first week of war. She had got up very early, almost as early as old Anna herself, for, waking at five, she had found it impossible to go to sleep again.

Had it not been for the contents of the envelope which she kept in the right-hand drawer of her writing-table, and which she sometimes took out surreptitiously, when neither her...

She felt ruffled by the little talk they two had just had--so ruffled and upset that, instead of turning into the gate of the house where she had been bound--for she, too, had m...

Anna stood peeping behind the pretty muslin curtain of her kitchen window. She was standing in exactly the same place and attitude she had stood in eight months before, on the f...

As Mrs. Otway left the cathedral, certain remarks made to her by members of the little congregation jarred on her, and made her feel, almost for the first time in her life, thor...

October and November wore themselves away, and the days went by, the one very like the other. Mrs. Otway, after her long hours of work, or of official visiting among the soldier...

There are times in life when everything is out of focus, when events take on the measure, not of what they really are, but of the mental state of the people affected by them. Su...

Mr. Reynolds walked back up the steps of the Council House of Witanbury. He felt as if he had just had a pleasant glimpse of that Kingdom of Romance which so many seek and so fe...

Apart from his instinctive attraction for her--an attraction which had sprung into being the very first time they had met, at a dinner party at the Deanery--he had always regard...

It was now the morning of Friday, the third day of war, and Mrs. Otway allowed the newspaper she had been holding in her hands to slip on to the floor at her feet with an impati...

The room was a very large room. But she had never liked it, large, spacious, and airy though it was. You see, it was furnished entirely like a German bedroom, not like a nice co...

The floor of the parlour was covered with a large-patterned oilcloth. There was a round mahogany pedestal table, too large for the room, and four substantial cane-backed armchai...

The days went on, and to Mrs. Otway's surprise and bitter disappointment, there came no answer to the letter she had written to the German surgeon. She had felt so sure that he...

The bride and bridegroom, each feeling more than a little shy, had enjoyed their late luncheon, the first they had ever taken alone together. And Major Guthrie had been perhaps...

"No, ma'am, there was nothing, ma'am, to act, so to speak, in the nature of a warning. Mrs. Guthrie had much enjoyed your visit, and, if I may say so, ma'am, the visit of your y...

The days that followed Mrs. Otway's journey to London, the easy earning by good old Anna of a florin for Alfred Head's brief sight of Jervis Blake's letter, and the exchange of...

August 23, 1914! A date which will be imprinted on the heart, and on the tablets of memory, of every Englishman and Englishwoman of our generation. To the majority of thinking f...

"Time and the weather run through the roughest day." It may be doubted if Rose Otway knew that consoling old proverb, but with her time, even in the shape of a very few days, an...

It was with those words, uttered by Sir Jacques Robey, still sounding in her ears, that Rose Otway walked up to the door of the room where Jervis Blake, having just seen his fat...

"There is good news!" exclaimed Anna's host, as soon as the door was shut behind his wife. "The British have sunk one of our little steamers, but we have blown up one of theirs-...

While Mrs. Otway had been thinking over the now rather painful problem of her good old Anna, the subject of her meditations, that is Anna herself, from behind the pretty muslin...

Rather more than an hour and a half later, Rose Otway, with bursting heart, but with dry, gleaming eyes--for she had a nervous fear of her mother's affectionate questioning, and...

"MY DARLING ROSE,--This is only to tell you that I love you. I have been writing letters to you in my heart ever since I went away. But this is the first moment I have been able...

Mr. and Mrs. Hegner stood together in their brilliantly lighted but now empty front shop. In a few minutes their guests would begin to arrive. Mrs. Hegner looked tired, and rath...

"I am so very glad to be able to send you the enclosed. Of course I have not read it. In fact I do not know German. But I gather that it contains news of Major Guthrie, and that...

They were now in the streets of the cathedral city, and Mrs. Guthrie, agitated though she was, could see that there was a curious air of animation and bustle. A great many peopl...

Sunday, the 30th of August. But oh, what a different Sunday from that of a week ago! The morning congregation in Witanbury Cathedral was larger than it had ever been before, and...

At eight o'clock the same evening, Mr. Reynolds and Mr. Hayley were eating a hasty meal in the Trellis House. James Hayley had been compelled to stay on till the last train back...

In her heart Mrs. Otway thought she understood very well what her old friend, Miss Forsyth, meant by the question. For it was Wednesday, the 5th of August, 1914. England had jus...

"And now," said Mrs. Guthrie, looking at the little group of people who sat round her in the Council Chamber, "and now I have told you, almost I think word for word, everything...

And now the small group of men and women who were to be present at the marriage of Rose Otway and Jervis Blake were gathered together in Mrs. Robey's large drawing-room. Seven p...

After the door had shut behind Alfred Head, Anna Bauer sat on, quite motionless, awhile. What mind was left to her, after the terrifying and agonising interview she had just had...