The painted room

Little Martha Kenworthy, to use her own careless expression, was "in bad with her dad," as usual. But she was not a girl to be disturbed by a trifle of that sort. She had been h...

For physically, she got tired of it herself. Thank Heaven the rush which had been accumulating for weeks would be over this evening! It was an added misfortune that the old frie...

"Oh, that girl is as good as gold, Bob. They all wear thin things in the halls, Martha says." Emily liked her. To be sure, the ease with which she had taken up her permanent abo...

Johnnie had arrived home from college two days after the headline appeared, and his mother had been ready to receive him. She said he had to apologize to the whole club publicly...

It sobered Emily to see the ancestry driving her defenseless daughter hither and thither like a slave. Would it not be ironical, now, if this girl "turned out" like that aunt wh...

Emily used to compare that picture, chuckling, to the picture of Boston which one of her neighbors had made for herself, upon her return from a memorable visit there. Mrs. Jenni...

That was the most he could say. He could offer her no help. All she could ask of him was that he would refrain from interfering. But if Jim had been in Bob's place, Jim would ha...

Emily saw Bob start towards Martha. She thought he was intending seizing her by the arm, pulling her into the room, making her listen. So she sank down into a chair.

"This is my case!" she cried, "If you take it up I'll never speak to you again as long as I live! I'll go over to French! I'll go over to the other side! And if you promise me n...

"This is a very unpleasant affair, Kenworthy," he began, smoothly. "I left Eve crying her eyes out. She wanted to come with me, but I wouldn't have it. I don't know what she's s...

They went together to look at Martha's room, two floors above Emily's. Martha was repressing sobs, now, like a threatened child. Emily asked about the college, to compose her. H...

The girl dozed at length, moaning. The clock struck, and the hours passed, and Emily lay there, open-eyed, fleeing in vain terror from one corner of her consciousness to the oth...

"You just say that. You don't even scold me! I've learned my lesson. You don't have to say anything! My God!" cried little Martha Kenworthy. "What I've been through! And those f...

Emily might like this novel-writing--and sometimes she thought it would do Martha good to get this resentment all out of her mind, expressed in words--of she might disapprove--f...

Emily knew Bob felt brutally slighted. If there was one subject on which he might expect a daughter to ask his advice, surely it was on the purchase of a car. Emily felt that, b...

"I just thought I'd tell you about Johnnie. He's going to be home in about three weeks, I think, or maybe four. So it would have to come out, anyway. Do you know what he's doing...

"Well, she heard me opening the door with my key, and she called to me: 'Martha, is that you? Come in here!' she said to me. And I went into her living room; and there was that...

"You mustn't be such a lazy selfish pig, Greta!" she had gurgled when the room was fullest of listeners. She had talked, too, cunningly of the turkey she was roasting for Christ...

"My dear Child." She had got down a further sentence or two. "I couldn't collect my wits in time the other day to tell you what a mistaken idea you had of your father and me. I...