The House of Fulfilment

The Blairs met about the breakfast table next morning at the usual time; a matter of four hours for sleep instead of eight would have been insufficient excuse to Austen for furt...

Summer in a half-grown Southern city is full of charm; pretty girls in muslin dresses stroll the shopping streets and stop on the sidewalks to chat with each other and with call...

It seemed all at once as if some wilful perversity seized Molly; at home she was so petulant Alexina dared not cross her, for to anger her was to make her cough; abroad she was...

Alexina Blair, at twenty, returned from school to her uncle's home with but small emotion, as, at fourteen, she had left with little regret, yet the shady streets, the open fron...

Presently, as the child came to her aunt's knee for a completed garment, Harriet laid a hand on the little shoulder. Demonstration came hard and brought a flush of embarrassment...

So Molly and Alexina and Celeste went back to the hotel, which had filled during the week of their absence. There was life and bustle in the halls as they went in and, from thei...

As Molly, Alexina and Mr. Henderson sat on the front gallery of the hotel the next morning, they were joined by one Mr. Thompson Jonas, a lawyer of Aden, who lived above his off...

For the next three days Mr. Henderson avoided them. He spoke in the hall or dining-room, to be sure, but joined them no more in plans or on the gallery.

Alexina wondered if her uncle were not different from other people, for it must be the abnormal human who would not ask one question about his sister; mere curiosity must have d...

Immediately after the wedding Alexina and Molly went South. Molly turned petulant at sight of Aden and Alexina could not blame her; indeed, she and Celeste were of a mind with h...

Harriet Blair was seventeen when she went with her father and mother and her brother Austen to New Orleans, to the marriage of an older brother, Alexander, the father's business...

Alexina became twenty-one in May. She had found that in the settling of her affairs it would be necessary for her to remain in Louisville and so had written her mother to come t...

On the return to Aden, that last hour on the train, Alexina was trembling. She was glad, glad to be back, yet of the actual moment of arrival she was afraid.

There was more to be learned about William. He fought the boys who went to the public school, because they jeered him in his ignominy. Alexina saw it happening up the alley but,...

In her packing Alexina had left out a muslin dress for Mrs. Leroy's evening. Going up from the hurried supper to dress, she glanced at it, then drew forth a box from a trunk and...

"Your initials spell Mab," King William was telling Alexina as they sat on the step; "that means you'll be rich. Mine don't spell anything. I'm named for my grandfather up in Wo...

Molly, Alexina and Celeste stayed a week at Nancy with the Leroys. It was a household wherein there was no strain, no tension, though, to be sure, there was small management. On...

The evening her uncle chose to go over the whole with her, Alexina, in the midst of it, put a hand timidly on his. "I am grateful, Uncle Austen, you know that," she said.

The leisure of a summer evening had fallen with the twilight. Along that street in Louisville wherein stood the Blair house, with its splendid lawn, and its carriage driveway is...

The morning after dawned sunless and chill. The sky was a pale leaden, below which darker masses of clouds scurried. The wind blew strong, steady, resistless. At breakfast they...

The Blair reception to introduce their niece may have been to others the usual matter of lights and flowers and music, but to the niece it was different, for it was her affair.

On entering Uncle Austen's house, self-consciousness and constraint closed in like bars across the door of spontaneity. Alexina had arrived the night before and they were at bre...

Down-stairs the evening passed as evenings usually did when Harriet and Austen were alone. There were not even the varyings from parlour to front door that the heat seemed to ne...

Now William Leroy supposed Mrs. Garnier to be in his mother's room. A moment later he followed Alexina up the stairs, meaning to get something out of his desk which he wished to...

The girl came, bringing her reefer jacket and her Tam and put them on in the hall. The jacket was blue, the Tam was scarlet, and both were jaunty. He regarded her in them with s...

Alexina went up to her mother and Mrs. Leroy. Molly was lolling in a big chair in the sunshine, idly swinging the tassel of her wrapper to and fro. The shadows about her eyes we...

Alexina got up and carried her tears to her own room. It spoke her infantile capacity to discriminate that she bore away no resentment; there are things that the Aunt Harriets w...

The Captain, Mrs. Leroy and Alexina, on the gallery, watched King as he trudged across the yard. He was going for his horse that he might take a telegram into Aden for Alexina,...

Harriet laughed at Alexina's wonder over her. "It took me a time to realize that hospitality means the incidental oftener than the invited," she confessed. "My guests, you know,...

"Love is enough: ho ye who seek saving, Go no further: come hither: there have been who have found it, And these know the House of Fulfilment of craving; These know the Cup with...