The Gray Angels

The younger generation of Birge’s Corners insisted that nothing exciting had happened since Abigail Clergy’s love affair in 1867, and the older generation retorted that Thurley...

There had driven into the stableyard of the Hotel Button a queer box-car wagon on rickety yellow wheels, unwillingly pulled by tired nags. The wagon had a hope-to-die roof and a...

The sale of the nags brought enough to pay for the burial of Mrs. Precore. After which Betsey Pilrig sent word to have some one wheel the wagon up to the empty pasture land, acr...

It was not until Thurley allied herself with the gang at Wood’s Hollow that she came into possession of the Corners’ great mystery—Abigail Clergy who lived in solitary grandeur...

Young Daniel Birge, proprietor of Birge’s General Dry Goods Store, successor to Submit Curler, left his office, a built-up perch back of the shoe counter, to meet Thurley Precor...

“Gosh, you should see the tilt of his gold-banded cigar,” was Ali Baba’s comment to Hopeful the day the engagement was announced with a special heading, and also the fact that “...

Busied with her “penance” of quilting, the next day, Thurley was summoned by a peremptory rap at the side door. It was Ali Baba, his shabby silk hat laid across his heart after...

Then the second thrilling event happened! Like all thrilling events it happened with magical speed. First, it was carefully reported by Ali Baba and Hopeful that Thurley Precore...

Bliss Hobart was impossible to describe, Thurley concluded. As she first spied him behind his carved teakwood desk, one of a hundred luxuries in his elaborate studio, he appeare...

If Miss Clergy and Thurley were mysteries to the hotel guests and attendants, so were the guests and attendants mysteries untold to Thurley and Miss Clergy. To be placed suddenl...

Thurley had no calling cards—not every detail can be achieved in a magical space of time—so she told the maid to say it was Miss Precore and that she was expected. At which she...

Hobart did invite Thurley to the family dinner party. With customary tardiness the invitation did not reach her until the afternoon of the day, late afternoon in fact, after a f...

Instead of the Christmas season making Thurley homesick, it lent a vivacious joy that caused Ernestine Christian and Polly Harris to marvel at her development. The atmosphere of...

“It’s Sam Sparling,” Polly announced in boyish fashion. “Have you seen by the papers he’s to open here Christmas afternoon? This is Bliss Hobart’s prize,” waving her hand in Thu...

Ernestine Christian did not return to town until February, having been induced to play engagements on the Pacific coast. It was the mid-winter thaw when she arrived. She telepho...

Like all clever women who have met defeat often enough to escape it in the future, Lissa realized the best way to vanquish an enemy was to know her intimately. Therefore, she in...

Thurley did not see much of Lissa or Mark for the next few weeks. Perhaps Lissa deemed it wiser not to encourage Thurley’s becoming one of her protégées because of Mark,—at leas...

“Cook left last night with a case of champagne—there are all the dishes to wash ... and the boy left yesterday morning with my two best suits—oh, ho, art is merely incidental,”...

Ernestine returned in June nervously overwrought and almost petulant at having to wait for her sailing reservations. Thurley saw a new sort of Ernestine Christian, prophetic hin...

Thurley’s début was the night of November sixteenth, nor was it _Marguerite_ as she fondly hoped but as _Rosina_ in “The Barber of Seville,” the rôle which she had so often sung...

At first fame was good to have, there was no mistaking it. For Thurley achieved delightful freedom by the magic of her success. She began to do all she had planned during her no...

During the winter Thurley tired of the hysterical hikers, since they increased in number. They did not bother with such persons as Lissa or Mark or Polly. And Hobart, who was ac...

When spring convinced Birge’s Corners it had come to stay and housewives mended screens and painted porch steps, and indulged in that blight on civilization, house-cleaning, the...

Thurley’s summer was spent unwisely. She excused this by apparently sound reasons. First, she was tired from the season’s work and the unusual social demands which it seemed wis...

Spring brought again the longing for Birge’s Corners. Nothing else appealed to Thurley in the way of a vacation. Europe was barred from the engagement tablet, cruising brought m...

To see every window wide open and Betsey and Hopeful polishing them while Ali Baba hurried to and fro on all sorts of errands bent, to know that the stable was empty of its coup...

Dan’s car rounded the driveway of the cemetery, one of those desolate country burial grounds on a remote hill with a neglected wooden fence running about it and wild shrubbery c...

After a busy but personally unsatisfactory winter, the war clouds for America gathering without pause, Thurley admitted to Ernestine that she now understood the need for nerve s...

Whatever Lorraine thought concerning Dan’s frequent absences and his attitude regarding his home and what happened therein, she still followed the path of the Victorian era and...

With an armful of projects under way, Hobart had little time for Thurley during the winter. He met her with a sort of “You’ve got beyond me but I don’t think I’ll bother to chas...

Thurley went directly home instead of keeping a luncheon engagement with Ernestine. She wanted to spend the afternoon in remembering all he had said. The greatness of his vision...

An hour later Thurley discovered herself in bed, a doctor watching her and Miss Clergy in the doorway, her face gray with apprehension. A nurse whispered she had fainted while s...

The remainder of the summer found Thurley undecided as to what she should do next and not having Hortense as an aide-de-camp and with Polly still squandering her legacy, Thurley...

In September Thurley did go back to the Corners, Miss Clergy with her, but she did not take the maid, the accompanist, the extra motor car with which to startle the natives.

When it was time for Thurley to go to New York, Miss Clergy intimated that she would spend the winter at the Fincherie, while the Corners said Thurley had returned “to get cured...

Thurley had lingered at the Fincherie until the time grew so short she knew she must rush into her concert work without her customary rehearsals. She had word from Bliss Hobart...

“She went to sleep-like,” Ali Baba told her, after the simple funeral. “She wasn’t what you would call in pain—just sighing and calling for people dead these forty years. She sa...

Thurley, Polly and Bliss Hobart were taking a turn about the Fincherie gardens to discuss a multitude of detail, whether or not Caleb and Ernestine Patmore, gay deceivers to be...

Thurley returned to New York in October to sing some engagements. The public clamored for her until one engagement seemed naturally to lead to another and after the signing of t...

The Fincherie Christmas tree had been a great success with a Mrs. Santa Claus in a foam of tulle and lace instead of an apple-dumpling gentleman in a red jerkin and leather boots.