The Getting of Wisdom

"... and the Prince went further and further into the forest," said the elder girl, "till he came to a beautiful glade--a glade, you know, is a place in the forest that is open...

For some time past Laura had had need of all her self-control, not to cry before the children. As the hour drew near it had grown harder and harder; while dressing, she had reso...

"Oh, I like the colour very much. I chose it myself," said Laura, and looked straight at the two faces before her. But her lips twitched. She would have liked to snatch the hat...

But by this time half an hour had slipped away, and the girls were fast disappearing. Maria Morell loitered till the last minute, then said, she, too, must be off to 'stew'. Eve...

"How DARE you interrupt me--when I am speaking!"--she hissed, punctuating her words with the ominous head-shakes and pauses. "The first thing, miss, for you to do, will be, to t...

It was a bookless house--like most Australian houses of its kind: in Marina's bedroom alone stood a small bookcase containing school and Sunday school prizes. Laura was very fon...

At home, during those first holidays, she gave her sister and brothers cold creeps down their spines, with her stories of the great doings that took place at school; and none of...

At the creaking of the front door both juniors rose, gathered their belongings together, and hurried from the room. But it was a false alarm; and having picked up some crumbs an...

This dabbling in the illicit--it had little in common with the opener grime of the ordinary schoolboy--did not even widen the outlook of these girls. For it was something to hus...

Her hurt was not relieved by the knowledge that she had done nothing to deserve it. For she had never asked for Bob's notice or admiration, had never thought of him but as a han...

This guerilla warfare continued throughout luncheon, and left Laura wondering why, considering the dearth of time, and the distress of the ladies at each fresh contretemps, they...

If it had only not been M. P.!--that was the first thought that crystallised. Anyone else! ... from any of the rest she might have hoped for some mercy. But Mary Pidwall was one...

Glad though Laura was to see her sister again, she did not manage to infuse a very hearty tone into her greeting; for her first glimpse of Pin had given her a disagreeable shock...

It was also with an eye to M. P.'s approval that Laura threw herself, with renewed zeal, upon her work. And in those classes that called only for the exercise of her memory, she...

The affair began pleasantly enough. A member of the Literary Society was the girl with the twinkly brown eyes--she who had gone out of her way to give Laura a kindly word after...

On such occasions, while she undid her pretty muslin dress, unpinned the flowers she was never without, and loosened her gold-brown hair, which she had put up for the evening: w...

In the beginning, things, with the exception of numbers, went pretty well with her. Then came the final day, and with it the examination in history. Up to the present year Laura...