John's Lily

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And n...

John's old friend would not part with him till late in the afternoon of the next day, which was Saturday. Though the time of year was late June, the heavy heat was like July; it...

Markwood, the village where John Randal had lived all his life, and his father and grandfather before him, lay in the valley of the same little river that spread out into the or...

"Maybe I wouldn't; but you mark my words, that woman's no more her mother than I am. There's something wrong, and it was a kind Providence that brought you along the road this e...

John went up through the wood to Fiddler's Green, a few low cottages grouped about one of those wild and lonely commons that are fast disappearing from the face of England. He f...

"I never heard such nonsense in my life!" said Mary's stepmother. She was standing, dressed in her best, in the rather untidy front kitchen of the farmhouse, where Mary was iron...

The High Street of Carsham, generally so quiet and deserted, was crowded and noisy enough that day. The wide space in front of the old market-place was filled up with swinging b...

John Randal did not wait for much explanation from his mother. In truth, she had little to give him. It was impossible for her to imagine where Mary and the child were gone, unl...

Rather to his wife's disappointment, Mr. Bland decided at once that he could not go to London that day. In a few minutes, in the dingy waiting-room, while she sat on Mrs. Bland'...

John had never walked so fast in his life. Almost before Mr. Bland had politely lifted off the kettle and filled the teapot under Mrs. Randal's directions, he was half-way up th...

Mary Alfrick went away to the Orphanage, and Markwood lived its life without her. She was not very much missed by the neighbours, from whom she had always held rather aloof. At...

But days and weeks and months went by, and in spite of Mrs. Randal's presentiment, no one came to claim Lily; it seemed that her parents, if she really had any, were no nearer f...

"When I remember something which I had, But which is gone, and I must do without, I sometimes wonder how I can be glad, Even in cowslip time when hedges sprout; It makes me sigh...

"The time draws near the birth of CHRIST: The moon is hid; the night is still; The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each other in the mist." --TENNYSON.

years older than when you went away. I expect you've been harder worked than at home. I wish you could have settled your mind to have stayed--there was nothing to drive you away...

Once more a summer day. The children, not long out of school, were loitering in the warm shadows of the village street, for the sun was still high in dazzling, cloudless blue, a...