Peter Paragon: A Tale of Youth

"I'll have the start, anyway," said Peter, affectedly covering his tremors. He did not relish the idea of being second labourer to a girl who already had made him nervous.

He considered Lady Mary. Was not the world justified in that it put her high above fear and calculation, bidding her be queenly and untroubled? Peter tried to see her snatched f...

This was not Mrs. Paragon's last visit to Claridge's. In the days between her discovery of Miranda and Peter's dinner she talked with Miranda frequently and long. Miranda learne...

"I know," he said, "exactly what this choice means. I want you to be my wife, and I mean to use every argument to persuade you. But I am going to be quite frank. When you marry...

He turned and walked swiftly from the shed. She heard him running to the house, and took Peter's head on her lap. His lips were moving. Compassion stirred in her--a sensual comp...

Clearly she was now in earnest. Even Peter might have found her adequate. But he had now committed himself deeply to the proof he required. He knew it was at bottom indefensible...

He repeated the question to himself as, half an hour later, he lay peacefully in bed. Then he found himself trying to remember the exact phrase about Romeo and the little stars.

Incidentally Peter learned something about the housing of people in London; something, too, of agents and speculators in housing. Finally he perched in Golder's Green in a small...

Soon he wondered why, now that trouble had really come, he could not so easily be moved. The tears, which so readily had started from his eyes as he had brooded on his quarrel w...

Miranda was the more thrown upon Peter as neither of her parents was able to direct her. Her mother was entirely unimaginative. Her fierce affection for Miranda showed itself in...

A shutting door warned Lady Mary that her brother had returned. She rose from the settee, and went to the writing table. When she had finished her few lines, she gave them to Mr...

Peter felt in her a coldness that passed. She was looking over the moors as though she followed the blind eyes of the naked boy. Her attitude suggested that she, too, was part o...

Peter acquitted himself reasonably to the satisfaction of his masters when he returned to Gamaliel. He wrote without vigour or interest, but his grim industry saved him from abs...

Peter might justly have complained that his birth was too calmly received. For Peter's mother accepted him without demur. Women who nurse themselves more thoroughly than they nu...

"You oughtn't to have told me this so soon," she said, smiling at him in the friendliest way. "You see I don't yet know you well enough to contradict you. It would be rude."

That evening Peter, muffled in a heavy coat, rode for hours upon the omnibuses. His first excursion, in the early evening, presented the workers of London pouring home. The perp...

Peter was not alone. Gamaliel drew to itself some excellent brain. It was celebrated for young men prematurely wise--young men who had learned everything at twenty-two, and neve...

The peace of a track almost unvisited, and the unnatural calm of the water, emphasized the cruelty of this iron shore. The sea lapped softly into worn caves at the base of the c...