The Curate in Charge

The parish of Brentburn lies in the very heart of the leafy county of Berks. It is curiously situated on the borders of the forest, which is rich as Arden on one side, and on th...

The Reverend Cecil St. John started in life, not so much under a false impression himself, as conveying one right and left wherever he moved. With such a name it seemed certain...

THE St. Johns had one relative, and only one, so far as they knew. This was Miss Jane Maydew, who lived in London, the aunt of their mother, a lady who possessed in her own righ...

Mr. St. John's mind was very much moved by this conversation. It threw a shadow over his harmless life. He could not say good night or good morning to Miss Brown without feeling...

The school to which Miss Maydew sent the girls was in the outskirts of a seaside town, and it was neither the best nor the worst of such establishments. There were some things w...

We are so proud in England of having a word which means home, which some of our neighbours we are pleased to think have not, that, perhaps, it is a temptation to us to indulge i...

Perhaps it had been premature of the girls to speak to their father of their future, and what they were to do, on the very first morning after their return; but youth is natural...

The news which so much disturbed the inhabitants of the rectory at Brentburn was already old news in Oxford, where indeed it was known and decided who Mr. Chester's successor wa...

The girls I need not say had been engaged in calculations long and weary during these intervening days. Cicely, who had at once taken possession of all the details of housekeepi...

Mr. Mildmay had a very pleasant walk. He went through Brentburn proper, which was a mile from the church on the rich woodland side of the parish, an ordinary little village, a m...

Cicely St. John was not in the least beautiful. The chief charm she had, except her youthful freshness, was the air of life, activity, and animation which breathed about her. Du...

How brilliant was that August morning when the two men went out! the sky so blue and warm and full of sunshine, bending with friendly tenderness toward the luxuriant earth which...

Mildmay left the house of the Ascotts hurriedly at this intimation. He thought them pleasant people enough--for who does not think those people pleasant who flatter and praise h...

Mildmay made his way back to Oxford without any delay. He knew that the Master of the college, who was a man with a family, had not yet set out on the inevitable autumn tour. Bu...

I do not suppose that Cicely St. John had really any hope in her new acquaintance, or believed, when she looked at the matter reasonably, that his self-renunciation, if he had t...

Cicely wrote her letter to her aunt that evening, dropping some tears over it when Mab was not by to see; and almost as soon as it was possible she had a very kind answer, grant...

The day after Mr. St. John made this abrupt decision--almost the only decision he had made for himself, without stimulation from others, all his life--he went out into the paris...

Cicely went to her room that night in a very nervous and disturbed condition. It was her last night, too, in the house in which she had been born; but she had no leisure to thin...

Mr. Mildmay came to Brentburn the Saturday after the curate's death. The Ascotts invited him to their house, and he went there feeling more like a culprit than an innocent man h...

I will not follow all the intermediate steps, and tell how the curate's family left their home, and went to London; or how Miss Maydew made the most conscientious effort to accu...