The Bent Twig

The public school to which the Marshall children went as soon as they were old enough was like any one of ten thousand public schools--a large, square, many-windowed, extravagan...

Sylvia faced her aunt's dictum with heartsick shrinking from its rigor; but she recognized it as an unexaggerated statement of the facts. "You can't go home now, Sylvia--everybo...

One day at the end of a fortnight, Aunt Victoria and Arnold were late in their daily arrival at the Marshall house, and when the neat surrey at last drove up, they both showed s...

She reached home, as she had thought, before ten o'clock, her unexpected arrival occasioning the usual flurry of exclamation and question not to be suppressed even by the most s...

Any one of the more sophisticated members of the faculty of the State University at La Chance would have stated without hesitation that the Marshalls had not the slightest part...

They left Mrs. Marshall-Smith with a book, seated on a little yellow-painted iron chair, the fifteen-centime kind, at the top of the great flight of steps leading down to the wi...

"No, they don't let you sit down in here if you're as shabby as I am," said the man, continuing his slow, feeble, shuffling progress. "They know you're only a vagrant, here to g...

There was much that was acrid about the sweetness of triumph which the next months brought Sylvia. The sudden change in her life had not come until there was an accumulation of...

The design for the yellow chiffon dropped almost literally at Sylvia's feet the next day, on the frontispiece of a theatrical magazine left by another passenger in the streetcar...

The tall, lean young man, sitting his galloping horse very slackly, riding fast with a recklessly loose rein, and staring with bloodshot eyes down at the dust of the road, gave...

Under the scarlet glory of frost-touched maples, beside the river strolled Sylvia, conscious of looking very well and being admired; but contrary to the age-old belief about her...

During the autumn and early winter it not only happened unfortunately that the quartet played altogether too much Haydn, but that Sylvia's father, contrary to his usual custom,...

"Where's Judith?" said Arnold for sole greeting, as he saw Morrison at the piano and Sylvia sitting near it, cool and clear in a lacy white dress. Morrison lifted long fingers f...

The most brilliant of these couples were Jermain Fiske, Jr., and Eleanor Hubert. The first was the son of the well-known and distinguished Colonel Jermain Fiske, one of the trus...

Arnold Smith put another lump of sugar on his saucer, poured out a very liberal allowance of rum into his tea, and reached for a sandwich, balancing the cup and saucer with a de...

When they met at dinner, they laughed outright at the sight of one another, a merry and shadowless laugh. For an instant they looked like light-hearted children. The change of A...

The millionaire proprietor had asked them all over to the Austin Farm, and as they drew near the end of the very expensive and delicately served meal which Page had spoken of as...

Sylvia and Judith walked to school in a profound silence. Sylvia was shrinking with every nerve from the ordeal of facing again those four hundred hostile faces; from the new an...

A fuller initiation into the kaleidoscopic divergencies of adult standards was given Sylvia during the visits of her Aunt Victoria. These visits were angelic in their extreme ra...

Sylvia dressed for dinner literally like one in a dream. Outwardly she was so calm that she thought she was so inwardly. It was nothing like so exciting as people said, to get e...

For a time as they plodded up the steep wood-road, overgrown with ferns and rank grass, with dense green walls of beech and oak saplings on either side, what few desultory remar...

Sylvia was sitting in the garden, an unread book on her knees, dreaming among red and yellow and orange gladioli. She looked with a fixed, bright, beatific stare at the flame-co...

The rest of October was a period never clear in Sylvia's head. Everything that happened was confusing and almost everything was painful; and a great deal happened. She had thoug...

That afternoon a couple of children who came to play in the Marshall orchard brought news that public opinion, after the fashion of that unstable weathercock, was veering rapidl...

If Sylvia wondered, as she dropped down the heights to the valley, what her reception might be at her aunt's ceremonious household when she entered escorted by a strange hatless...

Three weeks passed before his letter came. The slow, thrilling crescendo of May had lifted the heart up to a devout certainty of June. The leaves were fully out, casting a light...

Although there was not the slightest actual connection between the two, the trip to Chicago was always in Sylvia's mind like the beginning of her University course. It is true t...

Like most happy childhoods, Sylvia's early years lay back of her in a long, cheerful procession of featureless days, the outlines of which were blurred into one shimmering glow...

It was quite dark when they arrived in the harbor at Naples; and they were too late to go through the necessary formalities of harbor entering. In company with several other in-...

They had been in the Louvre, had spent an hour with Felix in that glowing embodiment of the pomp and majesty of human flesh known as the Rubens Medici-Room, and now, for the she...

The trip home passed like a long shuddering bad dream in which one waits eternally, bound hand and foot, for a blow which does not fall. Somehow, before the first day was over,...

It shocked Sylvia that Molly's death should make so little difference. After one sober evening with the stunning words fresh before their eyes, the three friends quickly returne...

To any one who is familiar with State University life, the color of Sylvia's Freshman year will be vividly conveyed by the simple statement that she was not invited to join a fr...

She did not by any means always sit in the hotel and watch Pauline care for different portions of Aunt Victoria's body. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took, on principle, a drive every day...

As the "season" heightened, the beautiful paneled walls of Mrs. Marshall-Smith's salon were frequently the background for chance gatherings of extremely appropriate callers. The...

The next day was to have been given up to really improving pursuits. The morning in the Art Institute came off as planned. The girls were marshaled through the sculpture and pai...

A gaunt roaming figure of ennui and restlessness, Arnold appeared at the door of the pergola and with a petulant movement tore a brilliant autumn leaf to pieces as he lingered f...

That night after the Marshalls had gone back to their somewhat shabby boarding-house, "things" happened to the two people they had left in the great hotel. Sylvia and Judith nev...

When she went back to the silent, echoing house, she felt calmer than at any time since she had read the telegram in Naples. She did not stop to wash her earth-stained hands, bu...

As they drew near to their boarding-house late that afternoon, very hot, very crumpled, very solemn, and very much out of tune with one another, they were astonished to see a li...

In this way, almost from the first, several distinct lines of cleavage were established in the family party during the next fortnight. Arnold imperiously demanded a complete vac...

They were to sail on the 23d, and ever since the big square invitation had come it had been a foregone conclusion, conceded with no need for wounding words, that there was no wa...

The two sisters, their pale faces grave in the shadow of their wide hats, were on their knees with trowels in a border of their mother's garden. Judith had been giving a report...

Judith had said to the family, taking no especial pains that her sister should not hear her, "Well, folks, now that Sylvia's got through with that horrid Fiske fellow, I do hope...

As she stepped down the path, she saw a battered black straw hat on the other side of the hedge. Cousin Parnelia's worn old face and dim eyes looked at her through the gate. Und...

And so they went away, Lawrence very white, stooping with the weight of his suitcase, his young eyes, blurred and red, turned upon Judith with an infinite confidence in her stre...

They had told her at the farm, the old man and the old woman who had looked so curiously at her, that Mr. Page had gone on up the wood-road towards the upper pasture. He liked t...

XXII A GRATEFUL CARTHAGINIAN XXIII MORE TALK BETWEEN YOUNG MODERNS XXIV ANOTHER BRAND OF MODERN TALK XXV NOTHING IN THE LEAST MODERN XXVI MOLLY IN HER ELEMENT XXVII BETWEEN WIND...

XL A CALL FROM HOME XLI HOME AGAIN XLII "_Strange that we creatures of the petty ways, Poor prisoners behind these fleshly bars, Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze,...

X SYLVIA'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF MODERN CIVILIZATION XI ARNOLD'S FUTURE Is CASUALLY DECIDED XII ONE MAN'S MEAT XIII AN INSTRUMENT IN TUNE XIV HIGHER EDUCATION XV MRS. DRAPER BLOWS TH...

I SYLVIA'S HOME II THE MARSHALLS' FRIENDS III BROTHER AND SISTER IV EVERY ONE'S OPINION OF EVERY ONE ELSE V SOMETHING ABOUT HUSBANDS VI THE SIGHTS OF LA CHANCE VII "WE HOLD THES...