Laughing Last

After all Sidney never sent the telegram to Trude. But it must not be thought that all in a moment she adapted herself to her new surroundings, or saw Cousin Achsa as the "board...

The Romley house stood two stories and a half high, heavy-beamed, thick-walled, of square spacious rooms with deep-set windows and cavernous fireplaces under low marble mantels....

Martie Calkins threw herself on the cool sand of the beach and gave vent to a long breath. Sidney, standing over her, wished she could do likewise with the same picturesque aban...

Early the next day Pola appeared with Mr. Dugald in Sunset Lane in a simple garb that must have satisfied even her exacting cousin. Her mood was in accord with her attire as tho...

"He must be going to Eph Calkins or to Achsy Green's. Now I wonder--" Joe rarely penetrated Sunset Lane with his goods; Tillie Higgins and old Mrs. Calkins did their own baking...

"I am _so_ sorry that I cannot introduce you to Isolde Romley--the poet's oldest daughter," Mrs. Milliken pitched her voice so that it might reach even to the girls crowding int...

He led her over a little path that wound around the smaller sand dunes directly behind Sunset Lane until they came to a clump of old willows. Once a cottage had stood under the...

What made life at Sunset Lane so delightful to Sidney was that she never knew from one day to the next what she was going to do. Back at Middletown everything was always arrange...

"--I am going to tell something now concerning which I have given no hint in my former letters. It's something that means so much to me that I have not dared write about it unti...

Sidney was too deep in her slough of despond to see that behind Mr. Dugald's shock of surprise was a smiling admiration of her bobbed head. And even Lavender avowed at once that...

Sidney nodded, sitting very straight on the seat, her hand closed tightly over her purse which contained all that was left of the Egg after purchasing her tickets. Her face perc...

Sidney had fallen asleep on that first night at Cousin Achsa's with the resolution to escape at the earliest moment possible from her humiliating situation; she would telegraph...

"I guess we might as well," muttered Mart. Their matches had been long since exhausted; they had been of little avail for the one ship's light on the boat was without oil.

Sidney found it a little difficult to take up the fun with her erstwhile chums where she had left off. When she stopped at the Calkins' house directly after breakfast, Mart cool...

But Sidney could get no further than that. There was so much to tell Dorothea that she did not know how to begin. For those terrible hours on the _Arabella_ she had no words; sh...

Since the death of Joseph Romley four years earlier, the royalties from his published verse and the government bonds and the oil stock, that had never paid any dividend but migh...

"It's because I _am_ fifteen that I am claiming my rights," she answered, carefully ignoring Vicky's laughing eyes. "Each one of you has had the Egg twice and I've never had a c...

First came Mrs. Milliken's unpleasant announcement that the Summer Convention of the League was to be held in Middletown during July which meant that every day for two weeks wou...

Exactly at the appointed hour Sidney met Lavender on the beach. She was breathless and a little worried for it had been neither easy nor to her liking to deceive Aunt Achsa. Aun...

Rockman's Wharf was the center of the fishing activities of the town. To it, each day, the small fishermen came in their dories with their day's catch. From it motor boats chugg...

For the next few days Mart and Lav found Sidney strangely quiet. Sidney on her part wondered if they could not tell, simply by looking at her, that her uncomfortable heart carri...

First, to her dismay no one at the cottage had seemed to rejoice, as the crowd on the wharf had rejoiced, at her rescue. When Mr. Dugald led her in Miss Vine was making coffee a...

In the sunny embrasure of Mrs. White's morning room Trude Romley sorted over the mail that Pepper, the butler, had brought in. So gay and colorful was the room itself with its c...

"I have not written before because everything is so marvellously exciting. My telegram told you that I had arrived safely at Cousin Achsa's. The hours of my journey, all too sho...

Aunt Achsa had not slept through the storm. Accustomed though she was to the howl of the wind and the roar of the pounding surf, tonight it filled her heart with dread. Lavender...