The handsome Brandons

I don't know whether Brandon Mountain was called from us or we from the mountain. The country people say that there were Brandons in the land before the mountains were made. Any...

Within Brandon walls we are out of the world. We know nothing of the copper mines, except that sometimes we meet a shock-headed miner or two when we are on our way to the villag...

It was the very month before Pierce left us, and brilliant April weather, when we played that prank which ended so disastrously for me, and the incidents of which I can never re...

I just remember the boys shouting at us to hold on and sit steady. We didn't require that instruction, for every country-bred girl knows that the only thing to do when a horse b...

Aline always said that it was providential that Freda should have married, and married a rich man. She told Freda so herself one day, I remember, for I was in the room, but Fred...

Now, I have been going back a good long way, so that I might make it clearly understood what we Brandons have been doing, and, with a long family like ours, it takes time to pic...

To-day Esther and I were sitting with Aline in her room. It was bitterly cold, though fine and sunny. I should have liked to be out with the twins, whom I could see in the garde...

The young man had been many days under our roof, and we knew no more of him than at the first; yet the mystery but deepened our interest in him. A handsome, fashionably dressed...

"No, indeed," I assented, "and I am sure no one would ever suppose it. Still, Aline seems to think that we ought not to let him get into our lives, so to speak, since it will pr...

For some time Pierce's letters had been irregular, and when they came had been the merest scraps, very unsatisfactory to Aline, one could see, though she often said that, moving...

"Hilda," said Esther to me one day, "do you remember that when your foot was so bad Aline sold her collet to get you the best doctor that could be procured for money?"

I went before to set a seat for the old lady, and to tell Pierce she was coming; and indeed I had no need to hurry myself, for at every bush she stopped and appeared to be recit...

The summer had turned round to autumn before Lady O'Brien broached her project about Esther. I think she waited till she had us all bound fast to her by ties of affection and gr...

However, just as little Annie was carrying in the big tea-tray--which the robust appetites of the younger Brandons demand--to Aline's room, we heard the little pony-carriage dri...

That winter was a very quiet and a very sad one. As the days passed we felt the wings of death brooding closer over the house. Little by little Pierce had given up the ways of o...

That was the loneliest summer that ever I remember. Soon after Pierce had left us, Lady O'Brien carried Aline and Esther off to Kilkee. Aline bore her sorrow bravely, with more...

The following day, after I had presided at lunch, I set out with great joy for Rose Hill, and spent a long afternoon among the books, and though I had said, to quiet my scruples...

After that I continued my work of arranging General MacNeill's library with a mind very much at rest, and in a spirit of thorough enjoyment. I saw now no necessary end to my use...

It must not be imagined that during those happy weeks I had been quite forgetting my novel. On the contrary, it grew steadily during the morning hours in which I worked at it, a...

"Ah! you'd better go to-day then, for I've to spend a tiresome morning over business. We can meet again in the afternoon, and I'll take you to a theatre in the evening. Perhaps...

Half an hour later we were sitting at a pleasant meal, and I was only sorry not to be hungrier, for the Magnolia Cottage of my imagination could not have provided more inviting...

The day after I saw Freda I went with General MacNeill to call on his friend, Mr. Linklater. I can tell you my heart beat as we went in through the narrow nest of streets that m...

I was welcomed at Brandon as rapturously as if I had come out of a long exile, and delightful it was to see the dear faces after even a short absence. It seemed to me as if I ha...

The next day was cold and blustery, with winds that shook down the last remaining glory of the trees, and cold rain that beat the orange and scarlet of the dead leaves into so m...

That winter was like to be nearly as melancholy as the previous winter, when Pierce was dying slowly. The months passed, and no word came of Esther's lover, and as she had taken...

"Never mind, Lance," said his father, "we're glad to have you in any. We'll go over to London next week, and I'll give you a blank cheque for Poole. You've no idea what a dandy...

"I won't forbid your telling him," I said, "since you think it will make him so happy, but I don't want it talked about for a few days, till I have grown used to it, and you com...

We were in the wood, and the boggy ground under our feet was giving way at every step. The wood seemed all bog except for the uneven pathway which gave, in dry weather, a solid...

We captured little Tim Brophy from Brandon village, just as he turned away after delivering his basket of eggs at the kitchen-door, and kept him till Esther's note to her godmot...

The bog-slide claimed but one other victim, and that was Thomas Hanrahan, the widower, in his lone cabin over to Barnagee. His "fetch" had not come to him for nothing. The inhab...

minute, and she kissed me closely, and said she was sure he knew, and then she said sweetly that she was so happy in the two dear new brothers we had given her.

Freda had not been able to come to our wedding, to my grief. She had now been six months with Mrs. Des Vœux in Devonshire, and seemed at last to have found quiet happiness. She...

After all, who do you think it was of all the Brandons that brought the fortune back to Brandon? You would never guess. Well, it was Aline, and now I will tell you how that came...