Category: Novels

Happy House

Mrs. Walbridge stood at the top of the steps, a pink satin slipper in her hand, looking absently out into the late afternoon. The July sunlight spread in thick layers across the narrow, flagged path to the gate, and the shadows under the may tree on the left were motionless, a...

Chapters

26. CHAPTER XXV

Moreton Twiss, who was reading and smoking in the corner, did not come to the window, and Barclay and Jenny leaned out in the wet, watching the little scene of greeting in the g...

28. CHAPTER XXVII

It was one o'clock when Mrs. Walbridge at last found herself alone. She was very tired, but so happy and excited that she did not want to go to bed, and after walking restlessly...

18. CHAPTER XVII

To Mrs. Walbridge's surprise and relief, Oliver Wick made no sign for several days, although she herself had written to his mother on some pretext and mentioned the engagement i...

17. CHAPTER XVI

As Mrs. Walbridge went down to breakfast the next morning, she was conscious of a hope that Paul would not be too pleased about his sister's engagement. She had not stopped to a...

20. CHAPTER XIX

Mrs. Walbridge never told any of her children what it was that made her so suddenly decide, two days after her interview with Oliver Wick, to do as her husband begged her, and g...

1. CHAPTER I

Mrs. Walbridge stood at the top of the steps, a pink satin slipper in her hand, looking absently out into the late afternoon. The July sunlight spread in thick layers across the...

7. CHAPTER VII

A few days after Mrs. Walbridge had sent the manuscript of "Lord Effingham" to her publishers, she was in Paul's room, helping him hang a new picture that he had picked up at a...

16. CHAPTER XV

Griselda, during several days, was hardly at home at all. The Fords were still in town; she had lunched one day in Queen Anne Street, the next at Campden Hill, and nearly every...

8. CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Wick, on his way to "Happy House" one very wet afternoon, in the beginning of November, gave way to pleasant dreams. He knew that the lady of his affections was still in Tor...

22. CHAPTER XXI

Guy Walbridge did not die. He was very ill, and many weeks passed before his mother could bring him back to England; but after the first part of her stay in Paris he was out of...

27. CHAPTER XXVI

Oliver Wick, who had been told to sit down opposite Sir John, looked up at him for a long minute. The young man's face was white, and seemed suddenly to have grown thin, but in...

14. CHAPTER XIII

The Christmas Eve dinner party was rather a large one. Hermione and her husband could not come, as they were obliged to dine with relations of the Gaskell-Walkers. But the Twiss...

25. CHAPTER XXIV

The various preparations for the dinner that night turned out, however, to be more or less in vain, for the travellers were delayed and did not reach the house until nearly ten...

23. CHAPTER XXII

One day in early May Sir John Barclay, who had been lunching at "Happy House," managed to slip as he went down the steps into the garden and tore the tendons away from one of hi...

11. CHAPTER X

At half-past seven on the morning of Armistice Day Caroline Breeze, who was an early waker, but a late riser, was sitting up in bed reading. Her small, high up flat was very com...

19. CHAPTER XVIII

All this happened on a Thursday, and on the following Wednesday Mrs. Walbridge went out quietly, and sent a telegram to Oliver Wick's office, asking him to come and see her that...

24. CHAPTER XXIII

Caroline Breeze's diary at this time contained several items that bear on the history of that year at "Happy House." Miss Breeze had indeed been glad to chaperon Griselda to Yor...

5. CHAPTER V

"Lord Effingham" was the book on which Mrs. Walbridge was at work, and she sat the greater part of the next three nights reading the books that Mr. Lubbock had given her, with a...

12. CHAPTER XI

A week later Mrs. Walbridge received a letter from her publishers. It was a very kind letter, for, after all, publishers are human beings, and Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne were rea...

4. CHAPTER IV

"Roseleaves and Lavender," Violet Walbridge's last novel, was selling pretty well, but a few days after the dinner party the author left her house about half-past eleven, mounte...

15. CHAPTER XIV

The day after Christmas--a day spent by the "Happy House" people at Campden Hill, where, also, Maud and her husband and little Hilary were present--Violet Walbridge achieved the...

21. CHAPTER XX

Early the next morning old Mrs. Wick, who also had been spending the night in town with the friends where her children were staying, was gratified, while she was still in bed, b...

2. CHAPTER II

Happy House was a big old house with rooms on both sides of the door, and a good many bedrooms, but it was old-fashioned in the wrong way, like a man's straw hat, say, of the ea...

10. CHAPTER IX

It having rained without ceasing for a week at the Lakes, the young man had taken his bride to North Devon, where he had hired a car and they had spent a delightful time tearing...

3. CHAPTER III

Mr. Oliver Wick's ideas of courtship were primitive and unshakable. On one or two clever, ingenious pretexts he visited "Happy House" twice within the month after his first visi...

6. CHAPTER VI

It was about a week after Mrs. Walbridge's visit to Mrs. Twiss that Griselda went to the play with old Mrs. Wick and her son. Greatly to the girl's astonishment, Mr. Wick turned...

13. CHAPTER XII

A few days before Christmas Ferdinand Walbridge and his youngest daughter came home. It, was over two months since his wife had seen him, and she was very much struck by his loo...

9. ill. Afterwards we went down to Lulworth Cove for a change, and it was

while we were down there that I wrote the book. I was very happy then. Your work," she added, with a touch of innocent vanity, "not being creative, you may not realise what writ...