The End of a Coil

"What for?" said her mother. "I am sure all these places are nothing to us, and I think the country is very stupid. And I like travelling where I know what the people say. I fee...

Christmas Eve came, and Rupert attended Dolly to the Piazza di Spagna, where her friends had apartments in a great hotel. Dolly was quite prepared to enjoy herself; the varied d...

As they entered the house, Dolly went downstairs and Mr. Shubrick up; she trembling and in a maze, he with a glad, free step, and a particularly bright face. Mrs. Copley was wit...

To do Mr. Copley justice, he left the prison very well provided and furnished. The store closet and pantry were stocked; the house put in tolerable order, and two maids were tak...

Lawrence could get no more satisfaction from Dolly. She left him, and went and stood at the window of her mother's room, looking out. The sunset landscape was glorious. Bay and...

Dolly was, however, partly mistaken. Lady Brierley was a help. First, for the likenesses. Dolly painted so charming a little picture of her ladyship that it was a perpetual lett...

The place inhabited by the Thayers was a regular Italian villa. It had not been at all in order that suited English notions of comfort, or American either, when they moved in; b...

More than a week passed, and Mr. Copley was steadily convalescent. He had not left his room yet, but he needed no longer the steady attendance of some one bound to minister to h...

The passage was stormy and long. Mrs. Copley and her daughter were both soon fully occupied with attending to their own sensations; and neither Rupert nor Lawrence had any more...

Which was the blissful truth. Even anxiety did not prevent its being the truth; perhaps anxiety even at times put a keener edge upon enjoyment; Dolly fled from troublesome thoug...

Dolly threw off her hat and went down to the kitchen premises. Mr. Shubrick repaired to the sick-room and relieved Mrs. Copley. That lady, descending to the lower part of the ho...

"How long you have stayed, Dolly!" was Mrs. Copley's greeting. "I don't see what is to become of me in this lonely place, if you are always trotting about. I shall die!"

The owner of the voice came forward; a portly, respectable landlady. She surveyed Dolly, glanced at the cab, became very civil, invited Dolly in, and sent the maid upstairs to m...

The next day was a delightful one in Dolly's experience. Mr. St. Leger went back to town early in the morning; and as soon as she was free of him, Dolly's delight began. She att...

The days that followed were full of pleasure; and Dolly kept to her resolution, not to spoil the present by care about the future. Indeed, the balmy air and the genial light and...

Dolly shared her friend's room. Talk ran on, all the while they were undressing, upon all manner of trifles. When they were laid down, however, and Dolly was just rejoicing to b...

It was past twelve by the clock tower when the two left the gondola and entered the Place of St. Mark. The old church with its cupolas, the open Place, the pillars with St. Theo...

Mrs. Eberstein watched during the next few days, to see, if she could, whether the sudden resolve taking on Dolly's part that first evening "meant anything," as she expressed it...

Dolly made her mother's excuses, which seemed to her visitor perfectly natural, and ushered him down to the supper laid in the little kitchen; Dolly explaining very simply that...

Mrs. Jersey could not leave town the next day. Dolly had to wait. It was hard waiting. She half wished she had stayed that day also with her father; yet when she asked herself w...

No doubts troubled Dolly's mind during that drive, about dress or anything else. Her dress she had forgotten indeed; and the pain of leaving her mother at home was forced to giv...

Dolly had little comfort from her conversation with her father. She turned over in her mind his offer to quit wine if St. Leger would do the same. St. Leger would not give any s...

It was not till the end of May that they got away from Naples. Mrs. Copley was long tired of her stay there, and even, she said, tired of the bay! Dolly was glad to have her fat...

The plan worked, as Dolly had known from the first, that it would. Mrs. Copley came into it, and then Mr. Copley could not resist. It only grieved Mrs. Copley's heart that there...

Dolly on her part had not much comfort in the review of this afternoon. "It was no good," she said to herself; "I am afraid it has encouraged Lawrence St. Leger in nonsense. I d...

Lawrence did talk with Mrs. Copley; and the result of the discussion was that the decision and management of their movements was finally made over to him. Whether it happened by...

It was a very special delectation which the school were to enjoy to-day. The girls thought it always "fun," of course, to quit lessons and go to see anything; "even factories,"...

The door stands open of a handsome house in Walnut Street--the Walnut Street which belongs to the city of William Penn; and on the threshold stands a lady, with her hand up to h...

"I suppose that would be a natural conclusion," said Dolly. She spoke easily; it rejoiced her to find how easily she could now meet Mr. St. Leger. Yet the game was not all playe...

A few months later than this, it happened one day that Mr. Copley was surprised in his office by a visit from young St. Leger. Mr. Copley was sitting at a table in his own priva...

Dolly did not tell all her experiences of that afternoon. She told only so much as might serve to quiet and amuse her mother; for Mrs. Copley took all occasions of trouble that...

Mrs. Copley did not like London. So she declared after a stay of some months had given her, as she supposed, an opportunity of judging. The house they inhabited was not in a suf...

It was Saturday and holiday, and Dolly went home to her aunt's. There her aunt and uncle, as was natural, expected a long story of the morning's experience. And Dolly one would...

Dolly did not know that her childhood was over. Every pulse of her happy little heart said the contrary, when she found herself again among her old haunts and was going the roun...

As the weeks of the first school term went on, the two girls drew nearer to each other. Everybody inclined towards Dolly indeed; the sweet, fresh, honest little face, with the k...

Dolly's school life is not further of importance in this history; or no further than may serve to fill out the picture already given of herself. A few smooth and uneventful year...