Least said, soonest mended

THAT'S what my mother was fond of saying to me. "Least said, soonest mended, Kitty," says she, when people gossiped, or when folks got angry. And, dear me, there's a lot of hot...

I DO not know how long I crouched down, huddled together on the ground. It could not have been more than two or three minutes: yet it seemed like an hour to me. Though I stopped...

TALKING to father and me, Mr. Russell grew lively; and once mother came to the kitchen door, with her finger up, and a "Hush!" for Mr. Russell had raised his voice too much. I w...

MARY RUSSELL was as near as possible gone that night. I'd better stop calling her "Miss Russell:" for mother always spoke to her as "Mary" by that time, and she had told me to d...

We always breakfasted at half-past seven, partly because father had to be up so early, and partly because mother liked it. Rupert ought to have been in the ticket-office half-an...

I think I said "Oh!" It didn't seem as if any other words would come at first. Such a rush of joy filled my heart, that I was almost afraid to look up in his face. I didn't want...

MOTHER was as good as her word. She didn't leave a corner of the house unsearched. There wasn't a cupboard, nor a drawer, nor a box that she didn't empty. But of course it was n...

I stood leaning against the dresser, feeling—but I couldn't tell what I felt. All the wrong I had done, all the falsehoods I had spoken, had been for nothing. I hadn't even the...

I was so taken aback with the question, I sat and stared at Mary. For it was about the last thing in the world I looked for, that she should offer to take a message from me to h...

YES; they did their best to stop in time. But it was no use; for the brakes of those days were slow-acting; and before the train could do more than begin to slacken, all was over.

She seemed to come to me like a sort of sunbeam. I had got out of sunshine, and among shadows, with black clouds overhead, and I couldn't see any brightness anywhere. And then a...

Once in every few days I had a letter from Mary. She spoke of mother as better for the change to Bristol, but still as not herself. I wondered if she ever would be her true self...

THE house where Mary stopped was of red brick, old-fashioned and stiff-looking, and it stood on an old-fashioned terrace, raised high above the road. There was one window beside...

No; mother wasn't her old self altogether; I soon found that. The great blow of father's death had left a weakness. She was busy and contented, and didn't murmur; but there was...

Mother could bear to hear Walter's name by this time, near upon three years having gone since father's death; but still she never talked of him without a sort of shudder. I supp...