Penny Plain

The hills circling the little town were shrouded with mist. The wide bridge that spanned the Tweed and divided the town proper--the Highgate, the Nethergate, the Eastgate--from...

to leave us a penny piece. We are destitute of relations.... Oh, well, I daresay we'll get on without a legacy, but for your comfort I'll read to you about the sort of house we...

The ten o'clock express from Euston to Scotland was tearing along on its daily journey. It was that barren hour in the afternoon when luncheon is over and forgotten, and tea is...

"Of course, I'll see another man, though it means throwing away more money. But"--his face fell--"they told me you were the best man for the heart.... Leave my work! The thing's...

"It is the only set of the kind I ever met with in which you are neither led nor driven, but actually fall, and that imperceptibly into literary topics; and I attribute it to th...

" ... Ruth, all heart and tenderness Who wept, like Chaucer's Prioress, When Dash was smitten: Who blushed before the mildest men, Yet waxed a very Corday when You teased the ki...

When Peter Reid arrived at Priorsford Station from London he stood for a few minutes looking about him in a lost way, almost as if after thirty years he expected to see a "kent...

About this time Jean wrote a letter to David at Oxford. It is wonderful how much news there is when people write every other day; if they wait for a month there is nothing that...

A cloth of fine linen and lace covered the toilet-table which was spread with brushes and boxes in tortoiseshell and gold, quaint-shaped bottles for scent, and roses in a tall g...

Mrs. Duff-Whalley was giving a dinner-party. This was no uncommon occurrence, for she loved to entertain. It gave her real pleasure to provide a good meal and to see her guests...

" ... It was a tremendous treat to get your budget this morning after three mails of silence. I got your cable saying you were back before I knew you contemplated going, so I ne...

It was a clear, blue-and-white day, with clouds scudding across the sky, and a cold, whistling wind that blew the fallen leaves along the dry roads--a day that made people walk...

"Lord Clinchum waved a careless hand. A small portion of blood royal flows in my veins, he said, but it does not worry me at all and after all, he added piously, at the Day of J...

"I hear the whaups on windy days Cry up among the peat Whaur, on the road that spiels the braes, I've heard ma ain sheep's feet. An' the bonnie lambs wi' their canny ways And th...

Miss Bella Bathgate was a staunch supporter of the Parish Kirk. She had no use for any other denomination, and no sympathy with any but the Presbyterian form of worship. Episcop...

The living-room at The Rigs was the stage of many plays. Its uses ranged from the tent of a ménagerie or the wigwam of an Indian brave to the Forest of Arden.

It is true they had to go to school as usual, and learn their home lessons, but their lack of attention in school-hours must have sorely tried their teachers, and their home les...

Weather had little or no effect on Jean's spirits, and to-day, happy in having David at home, she cared nothing for the depressing mist that shrouded the hills, or the dank drip...

"When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul...

January is always a long, flat month: the Christmas festivities are over, the bills are waiting to be paid, the weather is very often of the dreariest, spring is yet far distant...

"O, I wad like to ken--to the beggar-wife says I-- Why chops are guid to brander and nane sae guid to fry, An' siller, that's sae braw to get, is brawer still to gie. --_It's ge...

"Marvell, who had both pleasure and success, who must have enjoyed life if ever man did, ... found his happiness in the garden where he was."--From an article in _The Times Lite...

"The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, Lets in the light through chinks that time has made: Stronger by weakness wiser men become As they draw near to their eternal hom...

The lot of the conscientious philanthropist is not an easy one. The kind but unthinking rich can strew their benefits about, careless of their effect on the recipients, but the...

"There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern.... No, Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much...

"It was a lover and his lass, With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino, That o'er the green corn-fields did pass, In the spring-time, the only pretty ring time...."

Jean awoke early on her wedding morning and lay and thought over the twenty-three years of her life, and wondered what she had done to be so blessed, for, looking back, it seeme...