The Eldest Son

For an old lady who did not enjoy the best of health, who had lived all her life in an atmosphere of congenial companionship and now lived alone, who had no place of importance...

"My dear Lady George Dubec" [wrote Mrs. Clinton], "My husband and I will be glad if you will come to us here when you return to Meadshire, which Dick tells me will be next Wedne...

As the time came near for Dick's visit the Squire's mood changed from one of genial satisfaction to a nervous irascibility, which, as Joan said to Nancy, made him very difficult...

Humphrey went from Kencote to Thatchover, where Lady Aldeburgh was for the time being residing with her numerous family. This did not include her husband, who preferred to play...

It was about seven o'clock in the evening. Mrs. Clinton stood for a moment on the pavement, on which the light of a street lamp shone and was reflected from the wet stone, and p...

Surrounded by its winter woods and an over-thick growth of evergreens, the little Jacobean hall, which had for centuries been the second home of the Clintons of Kencote, had an...

The Squire may have forgotten, when he gave his consent to Virginia being asked to Kencote on this particular date, that on the following day the hounds would meet at Kencote, a...

Nancy stood with her uncle, as she had announced her intention of doing. Sir Herbert, in a Norfolk jacket of voluminous tweed and a green Tyrolean hat, would hardly have been re...

The meet on Monday was at Apthorpe Common, a distance of nine miles from Kencote, and the three men appeared at breakfast in boots and breeches. The Squire always did so, and do...

The twins were meeting a train, but the train was late. They walked up and down the platform, by the side of which the station-master's arabis and aubrietia, primroses and daffo...

On Monday some of the party assembled at Kencote hunted, but the Squire, who had given up hunting for the season for reasons we know of, went out with Sir Herbert Birkett and Ge...

The Assembly Room of the Royal Hotel at Bathgate had been the scene of many fashionable gatherings in days gone by, when London had not been so easy of access, and the rank and...

There was not much pleasure for the Squire that day, although they found a fox without delay, and with one check hunted him across the best of the South Meadshire country and ki...

Mrs. Clinton sat in Lady Birkett's drawing-room prepared to interview, one by one, twenty or more of the ladies who had answered her advertisement for a governess for the twins....

Kencote was three hours' journey from London by a fast train, and it had always been the custom of the sons of the family--those of them whose avocations made it necessary for t...

Dick went out of the room angry with himself, angry with his father, and still more angry with his brother. He wanted to meet Humphrey and have it out with him, and he knew that...

Walter Clinton, with his wife and two little girls, arrived at Kencote an hour or so before dinner-time, and the Squire instantly seized upon him for a confabulation. "George Se...

When Dick went downstairs again he said to Virginia, "Put on your hat and let's go and have tea with old Aunt Laura." She went obediently upstairs, and presently they were walki...

On the morning after the Hunt Ball the Clinton twins rose, as usual with them in the winter, about half-past eight o'clock. In the summer they were up and out of doors at all so...

It did not take Dick long to find out on that next (Sunday) morning that his diplomacy had failed, that his father, urged by his fears, had discovered what he would have hidden...

It may be imagined that the high favour in which Virginia was now held was extremely gratifying to Dick. "I knew you could do it if you tried," he said, smiling down on her, his...

Mrs. Clinton reached Kencote in the dusk of the January afternoon and found the twins on the platform awaiting her. With the station staff and the other passengers in the train...

Miss Bird arose on the next morning to find her window glazed with frost, and it was characteristic of her and of the house in which she had lived for over thirty years that her...

The breaking of a collar-bone is not a very serious matter. Men have been known to suffer the mishap and continue for a time the activity that brought it about without being any...

Dick, when he had left Mountfield, trotted on at a slightly faster pace than he had hitherto come, in the direction of Blaythorn, and did not draw rein until he came to that rec...

The Squire had a touch of rheumatism, and was annoyed about it, but also inclined to give Providence due credit for so visiting him, if he must be visited at all, at a time of h...

"My dear Emmeline," said the Judge, "if I hadn't such a profound contempt for Edward's intellect and for everything represented or misrepresented by him, I could feel it in my h...

Miss Phipp lay quite still on her bed for half an hour with her eyes closed, while the pain in her head grew and became almost insupportable, as she had known it would, and then...

"Nina," said the Squire, "I'm most infernally worried." He was sitting in his wife's morning-room, in a low chair by the fire. In front of him was a table set for tea for one--h...

Dick Clinton, the eldest son, arrived at Kencote at a quarter to eight, and went straight up to his room to dress. This young man--for, with his spare, upright frame, sleek head...