The Second Violin

Crash! Bang! Bang! "_The March of the Pilgrims_" came to an abrupt end. John Lansing Birch laid down his viola and bow, whirled about, and flung out his arms in despair. "Oh, th...

"Lanse, if the furnace runs all night with the draught on, your fire will be burned out in the morning, and it will take an extra amount of coal to get it started again."

There was no answer. With trembling hands she felt for her sister's head. It lay close against the cellar wall, and she instantly understood that Celia must be unconscious. But...

Coming down-stairs from Celia's room, Dr. Andrew Churchill made his way through what had now become somewhat familiar ground to the little kitchen. As he looked in at the door h...

"Two cripples," declared Capt. John Rayburn--honourably discharged from active service in the United States Army on account of permanent disability from injuries received in the...

"You're not asleep, I know," he said, firmly, at the keyhole. "I can see a light from outside, if you have got it all plugged up here. Let me in. I've some important news for you."

"I've got a sewing-machine that I know the kinks of," said Mrs. Fields to Celia and Charlotte and the baby, who regarded her with interest from the couch, where they were groupe...

"Now, Ellen, be a good girl," she said as she set about picking up the various articles she had been using in the baby's bath and dressing. "Charlotte's in a hurry."

Lanse stood in the kitchen door, lunch-pail in hand. It lacked ten minutes of seven of a June morning; therefore he wore his working clothes. He glanced down at them now with an...

"The gentle art of cooking in a chafing-dish," discoursed Captain John Rayburn, lightly stirring in a silver basin the ingredients of the cream sauce he was making for the chopp...

Young Justin Birch's lusty shout rang through the house from hall to kitchen, vibrating even as far as the second-story room in the rear, where Charlotte herself happened at tha...

"Charlotte will be so crazy with delight at getting home she will see everything through a blur at first. But when we have all gone away and left them here, then Charlotte will...

Mrs. Andrew Churchill, engaged in making up a fresh bed with linen smelling faintly of lavender, dropped her sheets and blankets and stood up straight. She gazed across the room...

"I think," said Doctor Churchill, leaning back in his office chair, with a mingling of the professional and the friendly in his air, "that we can get at the bottom of Evelyn's t...

"Not a bit, but I'm anxious for your hearing. I've been roaring gently all over the house without a result, except to scare three patients in Andy's office. Won't you come down?"

"I think perhaps they have seen it," Doctor Churchill answered, "and that's why they were blowing their horns. Probably some of them will start toward us. If they're not stuck,...

"Nobody at home, eh? Well, I'm sorry. I wanted to see somebody very much. And there's no one at the other house, either. I'm away so much I see altogether too little of these pe...

Charlotte swung herself up into the runabout as Doctor Churchill paused for her at the gateway of "The Banks." She had met him here at six o'clock every day since they came, and...

"I mean," said Jeff, coolly, "that if coming down here to meet George Jarvis were what you were proud of doing, you wouldn't try to cover it up. Do you know, Lu, I'm tremendousl...

"Well, I consider myself pretty lucky to have secured four sections all together on this train," said Doctor Forester, with satisfaction, as he and Andrew Churchill and Frederic...