The hope of happiness

Bruce Storrs stood up tall and straight on a prostrate sycamore, the sunlight gleaming upon his lithe, vigorous body, and with a quick, assured lifting of the arms plunged into...

Awake early, Bruce donned a freshly-pressed gray suit and went down to breakfast. His immediate concern was to find employment, for in work, he knew, lay his hope of happiness a...

Sunday evening the Freemans were called unexpectedly into town and Bruce and Henderson were left to amuse themselves. Henderson immediately lost himself in a book and Bruce, a l...

Henderson made his wife’s return an excuse for giving a party at the Faraway Country Club. Mrs. Henderson had brought home a trophy from the golf tournament and her prowess must...

Franklin Mills stood by one of the broad windows in his private office gazing across the smoky industrial district of his native city. With his hands thrust into his trousers’ p...

Several interviews with Freeman had resulted in an arrangement by which Bruce was to enter the architect’s office immediately. As Henderson had predicted, Mrs. Freeman was a rea...

In the fortnight following his encounter with Mills at the Hardens’, and the later meeting that same night in the storm, Bruce had thrown himself with fierce determination into...

Two weeks later Bud Henderson sought Bruce at Freeman’s office. Bruce looked up from his desk with a frown that cleared as he recognized his friend. With his cap pushed back on...

The morning after his dinner party Franklin Mills rose at eight o’clock. He had slept badly, an unusual thing with him, and he found little satisfaction in an attempt to account...

Bruce was finding his association with Freeman increasingly agreeable. The architect, amusingly indifferent and careless as to small things, was delighted to find that his new s...

On a Sunday afternoon a fortnight later Bruce, having been reproved by Dale Freeman for his recent neglect of her, drove to the architect’s house. He had hoped to see Millicent...

As Bruce was driving past the Mills’s residence one evening several weeks later, Carroll hailed him. Mills, it appeared, had driven out with Carroll and the limousine waited at...

Mills, too, though lately mistrustful of his own emotions, was well satisfied with the result of the long evening. He had spoken of Marian Storrs to Marian’s son and the effect...

Franklin Mills was now on better terms with himself than at any time since Bruce Storrs’s appearance in town. Open weather had made it possible for him to go to Deer Trail once...

Duty was a large word in Franklin Mills’s lexicon. It pleased him to think that he met all his obligations as a parent and a citizen. In his own cogitations he was well satisfie...

At Christmas Bruce had sent Millicent a box of flowers, which she had acknowledged in a cordial little note, but he had not called on her, making the excuse to himself that he l...

The day following his discovery of Leila Mills in the boathouse, Bruce remained in his apartment. He was not a little awed by the instinct that had led him to the river--the unl...

It was ten days later that a communication from the Laconia War Memorial Association gave warning that the stipulations for the contesting architects were being altered, and in...

Bruce worked at his plans for the Laconia memorial determinedly and, he hoped, with inspiration. He looked in at the Hardens’ on a Sunday afternoon and found Millicent entertain...

Franklin Mills landed in New York feeling that his excursion abroad had been well worth while. Leila had been the cheeriest of companions and Mills felt that he knew her much be...

Bruce returned late one afternoon in August from a neighboring town where Freeman had some houses under construction, found the office deserted, and was looking over the accumul...

Brief notes from Leila announced the happy course of her honeymoon in the New England hills. She wrote to her father as though there had been nothing extraordinary in her flight...

Carroll and Bruce dined at the University Club on an evening early in October. The tragic end of Shepherd Mills and George Whitford had brought them into a closer intimacy and t...