The Awakening of Helena Richie

Dr. Lavendar and Goliath had toiled up the hill to call on old Mr. Benjamin Wright; when they jogged back in the late afternoon it was with the peculiar complacency which follow...

"I certainly cannot," Martha said decidedly. "I think it's a very dangerous thing to take unknown children into your family. I suppose you think I ought to offer to do it? But i...

William King reported the result of his call to Dr. Lavendar, and when he told the tragic story of the dead baby the old man blinked and shook his head.

Mr. Lloyd Pryor thought very deeply after he read Mrs. Richie's letter. He sat in his office and smoked and reflected. And as he reflected his face brightened. It was a handsome...

"So that's the youngster we're going to adopt, is it?" Mr. Pryor said; then he looked at Helena through his curling brown lashes, with open amusement. Her eyes were full of tears.

William thought of women who were so efficient that they did not hesitate to advise their doctors; but he only agreed with proper seriousness to Martha's declaration that it was...

But she would not go to the Kings' to tea. "No," she said, her eyes crinkling with fun, "I'm not going; but you've got to; you promised! And remember, I have 'a very severe head...

"Well, now," said Dr. Lavendar that Sunday evening when he and David came into the study after tea; "I suppose you'd like me to tell you a story before you go to bed?"

The parting at the Stuffed Animal House the next morning was dreary enough. The day broke heavy with threatening rain. The man, after that brief flaming up of the embers of burn...

April brightened into May before David came to live at the Stuffed Animal House. Dr. Lavendar had his own reasons for the delay, which he did not share with anybody, but they re...

When Dr. Lavendar left David at the Stuffed Animal House, he didn't feel, somehow, like going home; the Rectory would be so quiet. It occurred to him that, as he was on the hill...

"I think," said Dr. Lavendar, as he and Goliath came plodding into Old Chester in the May dusk, "I think I'll go and see Willy. He'll tell me how much Sam's love-making amounts...

Dr. Lavendar was not sleeping very well that spring. He fell into the habit of waking at about three, just when the birds begin the scattered twittering that swells into full cl...

In the stage the day he started for Philadelphia, William King read over his Martha's memorandum with the bewildered carefulness peculiar to good husbands: ten yards of crash; a...

Every Sunday morning Mr. Samuel Wright and Mr. Thomas Dilworth--the one pale and pompous, the other rosy and smiling--took up the collection in St. Michael's. A mahogany pole wi...

"The play is my life--next to you," Sam Wright's Sam was saying to his father's tenant. He had left The Top before the two visitors arrived, and as Dr. Lavendar had foreseen, ha...

Lloyd Pryor stopped; read over what he had written, and ground his teeth. No; he couldn't send her such a letter. It would call down a storm of reproach and anger and love. And,...

When Helena went back to the house, her face was red, and her whole body tingling; every now and then her breath came in a gasp of rage. At that moment she believed that she hat...

David was quite a personage in Old Chester for a few days. Mrs. Richie was his slave, and hardly left him day or night; Dr. King came to see him five times in one week; Mrs. Bar...

With the exception of Benjamin Wright, all Old Chester lent itself to William King's project with very good grace. Mr. Wright said, gruffly, that a man with one foot in the grav...

Helena stood breathing quickly; it was as if she had been smothering, and suddenly felt free air. She was alone. The people--the terrible, persistently friendly, suffocating peo...

The next few days were intolerable. But of course, after the first passion of disappointment, she began to hope; he would write fully in a few days. She kept calculating how soo...

Helena had gone up-stairs to put David to bed. There was some delay in the process, because the little boy wished to look at the stars, and trace out the Dipper. That accomplish...

"He was cleaning his father's pistol, and it went off--" the poor, dazed mother said, over and over. The father said nothing. He sat, his elbow on his knee, his forehead resting...

Benjamin Wright lay in his great bed, that had four mahogany posts like four dark obelisks. ... He had not spoken distinctly since the night of his seizure, though in about a fo...

The day that Sam Wright was buried Helena had written to Lloyd Pryor. She must see him at once, she said. He must let her know when he would come to Old Chester--or she would co...

"Well, where on earth have you been?" Mrs. King demanded. She was leaning over the banisters in her gray flannel dressing-gown, her candle in its hooded candlestick, throwing a...

"I did. I says, 'You're sick, Mrs. Richie,' I says.--She looked like she was dead--'Won't I tell George to run down and ask Dr. King to come up?' I says." "An' what did she say?...

To have David go away for the long-anticipated trip with Dr. Lavendar, was a relief to Helena struggling up from a week of profound prostration. Most of the time she had been in...

It was incredible to David as he thought it over afterwards, but he actually slept away that wonderful night on the railroad! When he climbed on to the shutting-up shelf behind...

Monday morning he went up to the Stuffed Animal House. But Mrs. Richie sent word down-stairs that she wasn't well; would he be so kind as to excuse her and to keep David a littl...

Helena had asked Dr. Lavendar to keep David, out of abject fear of William King. The doctor had granted her until Sunday to give him up without explanations; if she had not done...

Dr. Lavendar looked at the bowed head; but he offered no comfort. When she said brokenly, "No; I can't have him. I can't have him," he assented; and there was silence again. It...

This was Sunday evening; David had gone to bed, and Danny had climbed up into Dr. Lavendar's chair, and been gently deposited on the hearth-rug. "No, Daniel; not to-night, sir....