Ruth Erskine's Son

IT took but a little while for the Burnham household to settle down quietly to routine living; so easily, after all, does human nature adjust itself to tremendous strains and ch...

THE woman on the upper porch who had come out to get her breath had in a short time passed through so many phases of feeling as to be hardly able to recognize herself. She had l...

"Mamma, I had a long talk with the doctor this morning. He is not satisfied with the present state of things. He admits that for some days there has been a retrograde movement....

"WOULD he like to have one or two young people asked to meet them? Alice Warder, for instance, and her cousin. How would they do?" Did his face cloud a little?

MRS. BURNHAM came into the room with the air of one in doubt as to whom she was to meet. Probably it was some one whom she ought to recognize; and if she did not, it would be em...

"Let us take a walk on the porch in the moonlight the minute we are through dinner," she said to her husband. Apparently she paid no heed to the slight dry cough which came so f...

IT had been an ideal October day: one of those ravishing days that come sometimes in late autumn when, though the air is crisp with the hint of a coming winter, it is at the sam...

"She is very pretty." This was Mrs. Burnham's mental tribute to her new daughter, as they stood together on the side porch after breakfast. It was the morning after the arrival...

YET in thinking it over, this course had seemed to Mrs. Burnham eminently wise. Mr. Conway was quite as much in touch with the fashionable world as a clergyman could well be; he...

MRS. BURNHAM had stood for a full minute irresolute; then she had spoken in her usual tone, explaining to Ellen that the friend she had intended to take out would not be able to...

IT was but the week before Alice's expected return, and Mrs. Burnham was out paying afternoon visits. She had confessed to Erskine that she wanted to get them off of her mind be...

"THIS is lovely!" said Maybelle, as she drew the curtains, and pushed her sewing chair closer to Mrs. Burnham's. "Isn't it nice to be alone together? Erskine wanted me to go wit...

AS a matter of fact the name of this story should be: Ruth Erskine Burnham's Son. But there are those living who remember Ruth Erskine and her memorable summer at the New York C...

THE friendship so strangely started between Mrs. Burnham and the girl thrust upon her conscience, grew apace. As Ruth had surmised, her old friend Flossy had lost none of her ch...

"I must ask you to forgive me, dear Mrs. Burnham. I know that my words must seem very intrusive, perhaps unpardonable; but indeed I thought I was doing right, and it is for Mayb...

ON a bright winter day more than a year after Mr. Conway's deliverance with regard to cards, Mrs. Burnham's next very distinct milestone was set up. She was away from the old ho...

THE next morning Mrs. Burnham came into her pretty parlor, where a dainty breakfast table was laid for two, prepared to be as wise as a serpent over the new situation. She was g...

MRS. RUTH BURNHAM was settled in a drawing-room car, surrounded by every comfort and luxury that money and modern ideas can furnish for a long journey; and her son Erskine stood...

"MOTHER, don't you think that you are being rather hard on Irene to undertake to hold her to restrictions to which she has never been accustomed, and which to her seem narrow an...

THERE was no driving out that day; the Burnham horses were remanded to the stable with no other explanation to their astonished care taker than that the ladies had decided not t...

"I DO not know that there is any 'thus saith the Lord,' against your wish, my dear," she said at last, in a hesitating tone, "but the inference from all gospel teaching seems to...

"YOUR mother has had a very special guest of some sort and was closeted with her all the afternoon; I suppose she is tired out; she looked so when I met her in the hall."

IT was just as the silver-tongued clock on her mantel was tolling one, that the suggestion was suddenly made to Ruth Erskine Burnham that she was planning wickedness. Instead of...

She had tried to be good to this woman, she had been outwardly patient with her faults, she had been long suffering, she had been silent over wrongs--she had effaced herself in...

"A study in black and white," was the phrase that floated through Ruth's mind as she looked at her. The girl was in deep mourning unrelieved even by a touch of white, and her fa...

IF she could have heard some of the talk that had taken place on the porch in the moonlight, Mrs. Burnham would have better understood her son's consideration. They had taken bu...

ERSKINE BURNHAM'S lesson was short, but sharp, and he seemed to have learned it thoroughly. He gave himself more persistently to study than before, and was even more devoted to...

"Something has been troubling me, Erskine, something that I cannot explain, because there is a sense in which it is not my trouble at all, but has to do with others. For a time...

"Mother! whom could I mean? The child. She must be sent for; she must come at once; or, at least as soon as a suitable escort can be secured. Would she come? And would she stay,...

"DO you think I will ever let you go away from us again?" This was Erskine Burnham's word to his mother when he had her all to himself in the carriage. His arms were about her,...