The Girls of Hillcrest Farm; Or, The Secret of the Rocks

Whereas 'Phemie eagerly accepted a new thing, was enthusiastic about it for a time, and then tired of it unless she got "her second wind," as she herself laughingly admitted, Ly...

It was a beautiful spring morning. There had been a pattering shower at sunrise and the eaves were still dripping, while every blade of the freshly springing grass in the side y...

Aunt Jane Hammond stalked into the meagerly furnished parlor, and looked around. It was the first time she had been to see the Bray girls since their "come down" in the world.

Lydia Bray was shocked indeed when they allowed her in the ward to see her father. A nurse had drawn a screen about the bed, and nodded to her encouragingly.

Lyddy heard her sister and Harris Colesworth in the hall, and then in the dining-room. The girls had not made a fire in any other room in the house. It took too much wood, and t...

The bang of the door, closed by the draught when 'Phemie had opened the way into the east wing, _had_ aroused Lyddy. She came to herself--to a consciousness of her strange surro...

Nettie Meyers was there--Joe Badger's buxom friend. She stared hard at 'Phemie and her sister, and then tossed her head. But Mr. Badger came over particularly to speak to the gi...

Poor 'Phemie was beyond her depth, although she rose "right side up" when she came to the surface. And when Lucas seized her she had sense enough not to struggle much.

Cyrus Pritchett had bullied his family so long that to be bearded in his own house certainly amazed him. He glared at the girl for fully a minute, without being able to formulat...

The Bray girls scarcely slept a wink that night. Not alone were they excited by the incidents of the evening, and the sudden illness of their father; but the possibilities arisi...

"I'm going to call up the governor--and mom--and Lucy--and Jinny," gasped the young fellow, who had so suddenly laid claim to being Mrs. Castle's grandson. "I just want them to...

'Phemie was very bold--until something really scared her--and then she was quite likely to lose her head altogether. Lyddy was timid by nature, but an emergency forced her coura...

While the neighbors were crowding around, emitting "ohs" and "ahs" over his find in the broken old desk, the proprietor of "the breakfast for the million" began to look pretty s...

Mr. Bray fell in with the boarder project, as we have seen, with enthusiasm. Although he could do nothing as yet, his mind was active enough and he gaily planned with 'Phemie wh...

The Bray girls walked up the village street, which opened directly out of the square. It might have been a quarter of a mile in length, the red brick courthouse facing them at t...

The soot began sifting down in little clouds; but the sections of pipe had come apart so gently that no great damage was done immediately. The girls sitting under the pipe, howe...

Lyddy did not have to go all the way to the Pritchett farm to speak with its proprietor. The farmer was wandering up Hillcrest way, looking at the growing corn, and she met him...

"Widder Harrison, she means," grunted Lucas. "It all come out yesterday at church. The widder told about it herself. The parson got hold of it, and he put it into his sermon. An...

Spring marched on apace those days. The garden at Hillcrest began to take form, and the green things sprouted beautifully. Lucas Pritchett was working very hard, for his father...

Whenever she heard the siren of the ladder-truck, as it swung out of its station on the neighboring street, Lydia Bray ran to the single window of the flat that looked out on Tr...

Later Lyddy Bray had more than "two minds" about taking Professor Lemuel Judson Spink to board. And 'Phemie's "You never took him!" when she first heard the news on her return f...

"I'll raise their offer a hundred dollars," said Harris, quickly. "My name's Colesworth. My father and I are well known here and in Easthampton. We are amply able to pay you cas...

The boys sat in the buckboard and talked earnestly while Lyddy and 'Phemie Bray "visited" with the Widow Harrison. She was a tall, gaunt, sad woman--quite "spry," as Lucas had s...

The school teacher pressingly invited the Bray girls to accompany him to the temperance meeting that evening; his buggy would hold the three, he declared. But both Lyddy and 'Ph...

It was scarcely dusk on Saturday when Lucas drove into the side yard at Hillcrest with the ponies hitched to a double-seated buckboard. Entertainments begin early in the rural d...

The two girls, almost at once, began to shrink away through the bushes again--and this without a word or look having passed between them. Both Lyddy and 'Phemie were unwilling t...

'Phemie's heart beat quickly; but she was no more afraid than she had been the moment before, when she found the green door unlocked. There was somebody--the person who had foun...

But 'Phemie was immensely curious about this strange little old lady who was dressed so oddly, yet who apparently came from the wealthiest section of the city of Easthampton. Th...

Harris had something beside a square and determined jaw. He had muscular arms and he looked just then as though he were ready to use them. Spink gave him no provocation.

Lyddy was to write to Aunt Jane the next day. That was the decision when Harris started for town after breakfast, too. No time was to be lost in acquainting Aunt Jane with the f...