The home-maker

She was scrubbing furiously at a line of grease spots which led from the stove towards the door to the dining-room. That was where Henry had held the platter tilted as he carrie...

“She said it was _fine_!” said the little girl eagerly. “She read it out to the class. She said maybe they’d get me to write the play for the entertainment our class is going to...

“Don’t you want to sit by the window here, Mrs. Farnham?” suggested Mrs. Prouty, the rector’s wife. “The light’ll be better for your sewing. That dark material is hard on the ey...

With an effort as though he were struggling out of smothering black depths, he sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Gosh! How little good he seemed to get from hi...

That afternoon when at half-past four he stepped out on the street again, his long lean face was quite without expression. But it was not sallow. It was very white.

Mrs. Anderson never forgot a detail of what happened that afternoon, and she soon became letter-perfect in her often-repeated statement of the essential facts. She told and reto...

It was after an almost continuous thirty-six-hour session of work that Jerome Willing finally stepped out of his office, walked down the dark aisles between brown-linen-covered...

As they stepped quickly along in the dark, they tried to piece together the chronology of the late afternoon for Knapp and decided that this tragic ending to his feeble life mus...

Mrs. Willing was as much interested as her husband in the arrival of Mrs. Knapp in the store. When he had finished telling her about the interview and they had laughed and wonde...

Evangeline Knapp was eating her breakfast with a good appetite, the morning paper propped up in front of her, so that she could study attentively Mrs. Willing’s clever advertisi...

In the hurly-burly of the rearrangement of life, nobody had been able to pay much attention to Stephen, and he had reveled in this freedom from supervision. He had always steere...

They were interrupted by their Aunt Mattie Farnham, who ran out of the house and pounced on them. “For goodness’ sakes, Helen ’n’ Henry, tell me about your folks! I’ve been worr...

said Lester Knapp aloud to himself. It was a great pleasure to him to be able to say the strong short Saxon words aloud. For years he had been shutting into the cage of silence...

Lester was glad to see Mattie Farnham come bustling in the very afternoon of the day she returned from Maine. He liked Mattie--indeed he almost loved her--in spite of the fact t...

Saturdays were great days for “the Knapp Family, Incorporated.” They were together at home all day, and always with a great variety of schemes on hand. In the morning Henry usua...

One of the most embittering elements of Lester’s old life had been the absence of any leisure when he could really think--consider things consecutively enough to make any sort o...

Old Mrs. Anderson, having borne seven children and raised three to maturity (not to speak of having made a business of guiding Mrs. Knapp by neighborly advice through the raisin...

When Evangeline read the little note asking her to step into Mr. Willing’s office, she thought of course the new things from Hasenheimer’s had come, and that Mr. Willing would a...

With her materials and patterns laid out on the dining-room table, Mattie Farnham was trying to cut out a dress for her Margaret, an undertaking which was going jerkily because...

On the evening of the day when Mrs. Knapp was informed that she would be put in Miss Flynn’s place Helen and her father celebrated by making an omelette with asparagus tips (Mot...

One of the interests of life for Lester was the uncertainty about who was to be his mental companion for any given day. It seemed to be something over which he had no control. S...

Dr. Merritt had telephoned Mrs. Knapp that he was going to make some very special tests of her husband’s condition that afternoon, tests which might be conclusive as to the poss...