Six Girls: A Home Story

There were ripples of sunshine all tangled in the glowing scarlet of the geranium bed and dancing blithely over the grass. A world of melody in quivering bursts of happy song ca...

A September twilight was coming on slowly, and in the grass the crickets chirped back and forth to each other. The house was all open, and through the windows came a merry chatt...

Slam! went the gate, knocking the dead leaves right and left, and whiz! went two girls up the walk, like unruly sky-rockets, with the odd ends flying. Rattle-de-tap, went four f...

Jean saw her go in, and heard the bolt slide swiftly across after the door shut, and just the glimpse that the little girl had of her sister's face, showed tears on the sallow c...

"Well, surely there never was such a pokey family," exclaimed Ernestine, lounging into the room where the girls were gathered, one bleak dreary morning, early in November. "Noth...

On the day of the funeral, the sun came up and flashed over the grey chill earth, with a spring-like warmth and radiance, and crept through the open windows with a broad glad sm...

When Mr. Congreve came back from his walk, which had been a very lengthy one, for he was much unsettled in mind, he came very slowly, and began an uneasy soliloquy as he neared...

"My patience alive!" exclaimed Kittie, slamming the stove door open, and poking in among the ashes and cinders with wrathful haste, "if this abominable fire hasn't gone out; I n...

Mr. Dane had closed his office at four o'clock. Nobody cared why he did so, and when he informed his book-keeper that she could go home, she never stopped to wonder why, but wip...

When Spring came, spirits and strength began to flag. Everything without was so alluring, that indoors and duties grew dreadfully monotonous and tiresome. Bea found that her swe...

The odor of hot cakes brought everybody in a hurry, when Kat opened the dining-room door, and shouted, "supper!" as though she was a pop-gun and the single word a deadly fire, a...

Mrs. Dering and Ernestine were alone; Ernestine had asked for the story of her own, or rather her mother's life, and now lay with her face turned away, while Mrs. Dering held he...

Kathleen was sitting in the swing, and idly pushing a hole in the saw dust, with the toe of her shoe; while Katherine sat on a log hemming a handkerchief, a red rose stuck in he...

Olive was standing at the window, with a thoughtful face. Any one who remembered seeing her on the porch one evening, a little over two years ago, and recalled her face then, co...

It was an eager, childish voice, ringing joyfully through the Staunton depôt, and making every one turn and smile at the speaker, who stood in a large carriage, running her eyes...

"Nothing, I tell you; take my word, and get out of the way, for I'm going to jump;" and down she came from above, with a swinging leap that brought a shower of half-ripe apples...

On Friday morning, while the girls were flying busily around, and Mrs. Dering was deep in the task of getting a tall cake browned just to a turn, there came a note from Mrs. Dane.

The sun came warmly in at the great west window of the picture gallery, and showed Olive sitting before a tall frame, and working busily at the sketch that lay in her lap. Very...

"We haven't had a letter from Olive this week," said Bea, breaking a silence that had fallen upon them, as they sat sewing in the cheerful sitting-room. "How long she has been g...

For a moment not a sound broke the stillness, then Mrs. Dering dropped the paper, and hid her face in her hands, and the girls knew that her first thought was to return thanks f...

Ernestine was getting better, and how could she help it, with everything heart could wish, perfect peace and quiet, and six devoted hearts and pairs of hands, ready to obey her...

It was an imperious demand, that every one in the Dering household had become used to, likewise, to the speaker, a mite of humanity, with wicked big blue eyes, a pug nose, and a...

Spring came, and with it much that was of absorbing interest, of untold importance, and yet so sad. In May, Bea would leave the home of childhood and girlhood, and would be mist...

"Uncle Ridley, I couldn't; I should hate him; I should hate myself and my art, too, if I felt that I owed all its success to some one else. He would be miserably unhappy, and so...

Joy and sorrow, laughter and tears come and go and mingle as one in memory of the past. Between _now_ and _then_, time weaves a veil, misty with tears of our sorrow, and diamond...

The house was lighted from attic to basement, and though it was Christmas Eve, the air was like spring, for nature sometimes turns freakish, and smiles on us when we are expecti...