The Fifth Wheel: A Novel

We all were seated about the table at one of Edith's sumptuous Sunday dinners at the Homestead when Ruth broke her news to the family. Tom had come East on a business trip, and...

Conventions may sometimes appear silly and absurd, but most of them are made for practical purposes. Ignore them and you'll discover yourself in difficulty. Leave your spoon in...

Robert Jennings sees the plainest and commonest things of life through the eyes of an artist. He never goes anywhere without a volume of poetry stuffed into his pocket, and if h...

That was nearly a year ago. Until one day last week I have not seen Ruth since, not because of the busy life of a young mother--for such I have become since Ruth went away--no,...

It was an afternoon in late February. A feeling of spring had been in the air all day. In the living-room a lingering sun cast a path of light upon the mahogany surface of a gra...

I cannot feel the pain that is Ruth's, the daily loss of Bob's eyes that worshiped, voice that caressed--no, not that hurt--but I do feel bitterness and disappointment. They lov...

I had no idea what I was undertaking when I went to New York. I had had no experience with the difficulties that exist between announcing you intend to live your own life, and l...

Miss A. S. Armstrong proved to be a thin angular creature with no eyelashes. She saw me come in through the revolving doors of the hotel at sharp twelve o'clock. When I enquired...

No one would have guessed who saw a girl in a dark-blue, tailored suit enter the tea-room that evening about seven o'clock, and greet a man, with a brief and ordinary hand-shake...

The next morning when Will and I motored home we were alone. We approached the steeples of our town about noontime. I remember whistles were blowing and bells ringing as we pass...

The incident at the horse show was simply the beginning. I couldn't go anywhere--to a tea, to the Country Club, or even down town for a morning's shopping--and feel sure of esca...

"Oh, no! I'm delighted to lend my woods to you. If you wear blinders and keep your eyes straight ahead and stuff your ears with cotton so you can't hear the trolleys, you can al...

It was Edith who told me the news about Mrs. Sewall. I ought to have been prepared for anything. Ever since Ruth had been employed as secretary to Mrs. Sewall there had been som...

I did not think I would be seated here on my rustic bench writing so soon again. I finished the history of my catastrophe a week ago. But something almost pleasant has occurred,...

Mrs. Sewall didn't remain long with me in the library after dinner. She excused herself to retire early. I was to read aloud to her later, when Marie called me. I was dawdling o...

Van de Vere's was a unique shop. It had grown from a single ill-lighted sort of studio into a very smart and beautifully equipped establishment, conveniently located in the shop...

Will and I were buried in a little place in Newfoundland all summer, and Ruth's letters to us, always three days old when they reached me, were few and infrequent. What brief no...

Esther could earn a dollar an evening at canvassing. One evening's canvassing made a dozen egg-nogs for me. Esther poured them down my throat in place of chicken and fresh veget...

Débutantes are a good deal like first novels--advertised and introduced at a great expenditure of money and effort, and presented to the public with fear and trembling. But the...

I spend my afternoons walking alone in the country. It is sweet and clean out-of-doors, and I need purifying. My wanderings disturb Lucy. She is always on the lookout for me, in...

The days at Van de Vere's grew gradually into a year, into two years, into nearly three. From assistant to Virginia Van de Vere I became consultant, from consultant, partner fin...

Better stay with the Morgans! Who was I to be bandied about in such fashion? Couldn't have me! I wasn't a seamstress who went out by the day. House packed with company! Well--wh...

During the following week Miss Vars often caught a fleeting glimpse of Mr. Sewall on his way in or out of town. She heard that he attended a Country Club dance the following Sat...

One day, however, I realized that I hadn't walked around Tom. I really hadn't circumvented, by persistence and determination, the obstacles that lay in the way to triumph. Some...

When I was a little girl, Idlewold, the estate of Mrs. Leonard Jackson where I first met Breckenridge Sewall, was a region of rough pasture lands. Thither we children used to go...

In spite of Mrs. Sewall's crowded engagement calendar, she was a woman with very few close friends. She was very clever; she could converse ably; she could entertain brilliantly...

We Vars were all at Edith's in Hilton, even to Tom and Elise, who had taken a cottage on the Cape for the summer and were able to run up and join us all for the holiday. Will an...

I didn't know whether it was more "poor old Bob" or "poor old Ruth." Ruth was so arduous at first, so in earnest--like a child with a new and engrossing plaything for a day or t...

There followed a long hot summer. There followed days of hopelessness. There followed a wild desire for crisp muslin curtains, birds to wake me in the morning, a porcelain tub,...

Some people cannot understand how a girl can marry a man she doesn't love. She can do it more easily than she can stay at home, watch half her friends marry, and feel herself sl...

I didn't tell Lucy that I was with Mrs. Sewall. I had my mail directed to Esther's college club. I rather hated to picture the terrible curses that Edith would call down upon my...

As I stood there in my devastated room, hugging to me a little scrap of a dog, a desire to conceal my present poverty swept over me, just as I had always wanted to hide the tell...