The Prodigal Pro Tem

If Barnes had been asked to define the one thing lacking in the scene before him, he would probably have answered sentimentally, “A woman--a young and very fair woman,” not that...

The little old lady sitting by the window in the big living-room, as serene as Whistler’s portrait of his mother, may have had a temper but if so, thought Barnes as he entered a...

They had no sooner reached the head of the stairs than a second tinkle came rippling fairy-like the length of the white-finished hall from a room at the end facing the West. Mis...

At the round table covered with sun-bleached napery and silver that caught the candle light until it seemed ablaze, Aunt Philomela, with a diplomacy equaled only by that of King...

Barnes noted that Miss Van Patten had a personality which asserted itself even in the dark. Though he could see nothing of her more than an outline, he was able to follow every...

Barnes awoke in the morning to the reveille of robins and thrushes. With chirp and whistle and flute note, they sang him from his hearty sleep to a still heartier realization of...

As soon as Mr. Van Patten dropped to sleep for his morning nap, Barnes determined to suggest to the girl a plan he had conceived during breakfast. That it would impress Aunt Phi...

Miss Van Patten was taking as long a time as possible to remove her hat. Her cheeks were decidedly scarlet. But she did not run as Barnes half expected her to do. She returned a...

As it happened, it was this very night that Barnes almost got a fair start upon his picture--almost found the inspiration to do it, as he expressed it, in a sort of gasp. One ca...

“In making up her column,” she explained. “Aunt insists upon putting down what each item is for; then she tries to add the items as well as the figures. Like adding parsnips and...

Carl was asked to supper and Mr. Van Patten insisted that the prize should be cooked for the guest. The king trout was avenged for his fate. Yet there could be no denying that h...

Barnes’ position in the library was a strategic one. It gave him an excuse for not venturing out on so fair a morning, after his usual hour with Mr. Van Patten; it saved him fro...

Promptly at seven the candles were lighted upon the dinner-table where they burned in sacrificial splendor in the midst of an offering fit for Ceres. At seven one, Aunt Philomel...

And with this shot Aunt Philomela promptly withdrew before the enemy could fire back, forgetting, however, that she was deserting her most important outpost in so doing. Barnes...

Barnes had said to Aunt Philomela when she demurred at certain things running counter to her own convictions, “Now that we have begun this game, we must play it for all it’s wor...

Aunt Philomela was waiting breakfast in no very good humor. On the previous evening, she had sat up for an hour listening to the unintelligible hum of her niece’s voice without...

With the breeze singing past her ears, Eleanor continued down the very road along which she had walked with Mr. Barnes when she had gone with him to the station for his bag. She...

Langdon himself did not get off so easily; his arm was broken below the elbow and the danger did not so much lie in the break as in the stiffness which might result. The doctor...

If Barnes had tried to paint Eleanor as she looked that moment, he certainly would have had to dip his brush in damson preserves. She turned upon her aunt with a little cry.

Mrs. Horatio G. Barnes was sitting in lonely grandeur in the drawing-room of her suite at the Waldemere listlessly watching the scant life which crawled along the hot macadamize...

Mrs. Barnes retired that night with uneasy foreboding, leaving father and son together. As she went out, she patted her son’s shoulder and stooping pressed her lips against his...

Barnes was awakened the next morning by a gentle tap at his door. He thought it was John. But, in answer to his response, his mother entered. She looked as fresh as a girl of tw...

Barnes led the way, and the other fell into step at his side. The road was going in the right direction now. It was as though every dusty fern, every whispering birch, every sta...

As Barnes hurried through the little Dutch door on his way to see Langdon, he felt like an exchanged prisoner going to rejoin his colors. He was conscious of one big emotion--th...

Langdon had mentioned thus casually a turn in the affairs of Eleanor which to the girl herself marked a crisis. It is no small matter when one awakes to the realization that one...

Though Mr. Van Patten improved steadily during the week after Barnes’ return, the old gentleman did not venture from his room. Joe remained daily by his side from morning until...

Twice now Eleanor had seen in a man’s eyes the dumb pain of an unuttered tragedy,--once when Barnes had gone back to New York; again this afternoon, when Carl had bade her good-...