Public Domain

Penelope S Progress Being Such Extracts From The Commonplace Bo

We have traveled together before, Salemina, Francesca, and I, and we know the very worst there is to know about one another. After this point has been reached, it is as if a triangular marriage had taken place, and, with the honeymoon comfortably over, we slip along in thoroug...

Chapters

1. Chapter 1

We have traveled together before, Salemina, Francesca, and I, and we know the very worst there is to know about one another. After this point has been reached, it is as if a tri...

2. Chapter 2

We should have arisen at once to burn sacrifices and offer oblations, but we had seen the sun frequently in America, and had no idea (poor fools!) that it was anything to be gra...

3. Chapter 3

"Come, come, my girl! you must answer the questions put you by the court. You have been an inmate of the prisoner's household since your earliest consciousness. He provided you...

4. Chapter 4

When the earl had sufficiently piqued me by his devotion to his dinner and his glances at Francesca, I began a systematic attempt to achieve his (transient) subjugation. Of cour...

5. Chapter 5

"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued to Salemina, "is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of proper Presbyterianism. Perhaps it would...

6. Chapter 6

Even at this time of Assemblies, when the atmosphere is almost exclusively clerical and ecclesiastical, the two great church armies represented here certainly conceal from the c...

7. Chapter 7

After presentation, each person has fifteen or twenty feet of awful space to traverse in solitary and defenseless majesty; scanned meanwhile by the maids of honor (who, if they...

8. Chapter 8

but it proved too difficult. Miss Hamilton's general idea was that we should write some verses in good plain English. Then we were to take out all the final g's, and indeed the...

9. Chapter 9

"I suppose she has more room on her list in the country than she had in Edinburgh; but if my remembrance serves me, she always enrolls a goodly number of victims, whether she ha...

10. Chapter 10

The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest) was seated on the grass, with her fat hands full of pink thyme a...

11. Chapter 11

We have lived in Pettybaw a very short time, but I see that we have already made an impression upon all grades of society. This was not our intention. We gave Edinburgh as our l...

12. Chapter 12

Salemina always describes a Scotch scone as an aspiring but unsuccessful soda biscuit of the New England sort. Stevenson, in writing of that dense black substance, inimical to l...

13. Chapter 13

"Losh, girl," said I, "gie ower makin' sic a mickle din. Ye ken verra weel ye'll get nae parritch the nicht. I'll rin an' fetch ye a 'piece' to stap awee the soun'."

14. Chapter 14

When I complimented this rugged soul on his decoration of the triumphal arch under which the schoolchildren were to pass, I said, "I think if her Majesty could see it, she would...

15. Chapter 15

Every noon, during this last week, as we have wended our way up the loaning to the Pettybaw inn for our luncheon, we have passed three magpies sitting together on the topmost ra...