The Lords of High Decision

“On time, Fanny? How did it ever happen?” he demanded as she caught his hands and peered into his face. He blinked under her scrutiny; she always gave him this sharp glance when...

The Lady of Difficult Occasions--such was the title conferred upon Mrs. John McCandless Blair by Dick Wingfield--looked less than her thirty-two years. A slender, nervous woman,...

When Wayne had taken Mrs. Blair to her own home and had promised on her doorstep to be “good” and to come to her house soon for a further discussion of family affairs, he told J...

Four days passed. Wayne Craighill ceased twirling and knotting the curtain cord and held his right hand against the strong light of the office window to test his nerves. The fin...

Wayne and his father met the next morning at breakfast, a function at which, when Wayne appeared, the senior Craighill discussed the day’s news in his large way as a student of...

Wayne Craighill’s education had been planned by his father on broad lines. The Craighills had of old been Presbyterians, but Colonel Craighill was no bigot; therefore, in keepin...

Mr. Richard Wingfield, unjustly called the Cynic, was suspected of literary ambitions; but the suspicion was based upon nothing weightier than a brochure on golf which he had pr...

“My promptness deserves a better cause!” exclaimed Mrs. Blair as she stepped from her motor at the entrance to the railway station, where Wayne in his father’s car had arrived b...

When Wayne returned to the office after luncheon he looked in upon his father, who, having cleared his desk with his habitual easy dispatch, was addressing himself to the consid...

Wingfield was mistaken when he announced at the Allequippa Club, apropos of Walsh’s purchase of a controlling interest in the Wayne-Craighill Company, that Roger Craighill had n...

It was remarked by the clerical staff in the Craighill offices that in the weeks following Walsh’s removal to the jobbing house, Wayne was unusually attentive to his office duti...

“Do I know the place? Sure!” said Joe Denny when Wayne ordered the chauffeur to be ready with the limousine at eight o’clock. The runabout was in the shop and the limousine was...

The parish house of St. Luke’s was a remodeled two-story business block adjoining the frame church. One of the store-rooms had been cut in two, half of it serving as a reading-r...

As Wayne entered his father’s house he saw with surprise that the little reception parlour, adjoining the drawing room, which was usually dark at this hour, was brilliantly ligh...

Wayne went on a Saturday afternoon in November to a matinée of the Symphony Orchestra, expecting to find Wingfield, who kept close touch with the box-office in the interest of t...

Mrs. Craighill bore the scrutiny of her new fellow-citizens with dignity, and by the first of December she had ceased to be a curiosity. She had met everyone of importance; even...

Wayne and Dick Wingfield breakfasted at the Club on the morning of their return. Notwithstanding Colonel Craighill’s skepticism as to the purpose of their excursion, they had re...

“You haven’t seen the country yet; we will take a run for the hills,” he said when he had picked her up. “I might have brought my little racer, but this machine is more dignifie...

Wayne not appearing at luncheon, Wingfield ate alone and then watched the street traffic from the Club window with listless interest. Across the street rose the grimy façade of...

Mrs. Craighill had not relaxed her severity toward Wayne when, with Jean between them, they sat down to dinner. She continued, however, her protecting attitude toward the girl,...

She left him abruptly and ran up to her room. He lighted a cigarette and pondered the rapid succession of events that had so filled the afternoon and evening. He tried to find a...

On their return to the Allequippa Club Walsh and Wingfield sought a quiet corner of the smoking-room and sat down to take account of their adventures, Walsh with a steaming hot...

It pleased Mrs. Craighill to breakfast in her sitting room the following morning. Wayne, finding himself deserted, drank his coffee alone in the dining room, with the newspapers...

Wayne had not appeared for dinner, nor had he shown himself at all during the evening. In the morning, however, when Mrs. Craighill and Jean came down he was waiting for them in...

Mrs. Craighill had seen her husband manifest anger on the night of Wayne’s departure for Philadelphia, but she had not until this morning found him crabbed and petulant. A night...

Colonel Craighill reached his office in anything but an amiable state of mind. As he disappeared into his own room and closed the door the chief book-keeper exchanged a wink wit...

“He’s in a bad way with pneumonia,” Paddock explained as he met Wayne at the door. “He crept in here this morning before daylight with a high fever and I put him to bed and got...

Wayne stood uncertainly on the boarding-house steps, glancing up and down the bleak, deserted street. The night was cold and a keen wind whipped his unbuttoned ulster round him....

It was two weeks later that Jean, paying her daily visit to the parish house, found Joe sitting up in bed. The nurse was to leave the next day, and Joe was impatient to be about...

Wingfield, Walsh and Paddock sat in melancholy council in Walsh’s glass box of an office. The Blotter had been at it again. Wingfield had suggested bringing Paddock into the mat...

Richardson, the distinguished editor of that admirable magazine, the _Hemisphere_, was a guest of the Allequippa Club, and Wingfield exercised the right of an old friend to dema...

This was the first intimation Wayne had given his father of the proposed change. He had purposely waited until this last hour before making the announcement, to avoid discussing...

“There was no other way; it had to come. He had no right to jump me because he’s in trouble. I’m not responsible for all his mistakes; I’m one of them myself and it’s enough. He...

They came to Harrisburg, with the sun low in the west and a soft haze enfolding the capitol dome--that proud assertion of a commonwealth’s strength and power that greets the eye...

They followed the Susquehanna northward into Jean’s country--“my country” she had called it. They saw dawn and sunset brighten the glad water into silver and gold and bronze. Th...

Joe, swollen with pride at having received a telegram, hurried from the mine to the station with the grime of the pit on his face and his lamp still flaring in his cap. He grinn...

Most of the houses in the neighbourhood were deserted, but lights shone from the Craighill library as Wayne entered the grounds. He had his latch-key, but he was not sure that h...

Joe avoided Jean. His days were spent underground, and in the summer evenings when he might have seen her with little trouble, he shunned walks they had known of old together. H...

A fortnight later Wayne cut the twine that held the key of his desk to Walsh’s lamp. The publicity attending his search for Joe at Denbeigh had driven him away, and he had gone...

The calendar swings us almost into contemporaneous history. It is September of the Year of our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Nine. Mrs. John McCandless Blair’s excuse for returning...

His high spirits evoked no response at once. She was on guard against him, and not lightly to be won to the plane of happiness to which her coming had lifted him. He sat down fa...