Stubble

The front gate screaked, a slow, timid, almost furtive sort of screak, and then banged suddenly shut as though it despaired of further concealment. Mary Louise gathered her sewi...

They drew rein on a hill which sloped gently away to the town a mile or so distant. Over to the right in a cluster of trees gleamed the white fences and buildings of the Bloomfi...

Joe Hooper was not a handsome man. He was of that type so often seen in the South, tall, gangly, and very dark, with a sallow complexion and a general air of inertness that alwa...

Joe had been right. There was a difference between an enterprise backed by popular sentiment and practically the same elements with the backing removed. In the first place, the...

Things had changed for Joe. It was as though he had been told that he had not amounted to much, that what he had come from had not amounted to much, and that in all probability...

Mary Louise had the power of concentration over her determinations as well as over her desires. Once having decided on a course she could keep herself driving at it without ceas...

Two weeks passed. Joe felt himself gradually slipping into an abyss of resignation. Nearer and nearer came June. Less and less he seemed to care. He took interest in nothing. He...

Joe had kept his promise. At least he had kept it as well as it was possible to keep it. It was decided that Mr. Mosby had met his death by drowning. That is what "One Half of R...

The sunlight was dazzling white. High winds during the night had chased all clouds to remote quarters and had with the morning suddenly gone, leaving the city to the entire merc...

Meantime, Joe had written his name at the top of a new sheet. He drew up to the curb on Broadway just below Fourth and stopped the motor. He leaned back against the tufted arm a...

The rest of that troublous day passed hazily for Mary Louise. She avoided Maida, who in her turn seemed disposed to avoid her. She made a hasty escape after the tea-serving hour...

Loneliness wages a Fabian warfare. It is likewise a craven. At the slightest opposition it turns tail and flees, frequently to steal back furtively and lurk slinking in the vici...

Half of August had joined the past. And with it was passing Joe's complacency. Each day brought a certain routine: customers to be developed, doubtful and recalcitrant ones to b...

What a curious question, that of Hawkins, "How did you come to get mixed up in this crowd?" And the inane response he had made to the counter as though it all were a mystery too...

Mary Louise was seeing quite a lot of Claybrook. First there had been the business of going over the books, although that had not taken much time. "Just to make sure how things...

They met at the Marlowe garage. When Mary Louise saw Claybrook and Joe Hooper standing together in absorbed conversation, leaning each with one foot propped on the running board...

Fate smiled. An itinerant Swiss became interested in the tea room. There were a few days of sharp bargaining and on October the fourteenth it was sold to him. The price just bar...

It was seven o'clock on Main Street. A very faint glow still lingered in the western sky and above it cool points of stars pricked a gray-blue curtain. Over to the left the moon...

Mary Louise walked back to the house. At the side porch she paused and looked behind her. High overhead sailed the moon, a day or two past the first half. There was a tremulous...

Directly after breakfast she went to the Mosby place. The sunlight was making glaring white patches on the pavement, of which she was but dimly conscious as she walked along. Th...