The Story of Waitstill Baxter

“Come after me if you will, father, and watch the welcome I shall get. Oh! I have no fear of being turned out by Ivory Boynton. I can hardly wait to give him the joy I shall be...

After Dr. Perry had talked with her for a half-hour and examined her sufficiently to make at least a reasonable guess as to her mental and physical condition, he advised Ivory t...

“Waitstill knew nothing of my going away till this afternoon,” continued Patty. “I kept it secret from her on purpose, because I was afraid she would not approve. I went with Ma...

THE snow had come. It had begun to fall softly and steadily at the beginning of the week, and now for days it had covered the ground deeper and deeper, drifting about the little...

“She is coming to live with us, dear.--Come in, Rod, and hear me tell her.--Waitstill is coming to live with us: isn't that a beautiful thing to happen to this dreary house?” as...

“Because all them that ever spoke 'em has perished off the face o' the land,” Timothy answered oracularly. “Dead an' gone they be, lock, stock, an' barrel; yet there was a time...

“THEY COULDN'T!” These words were never spoken aloud, but oh! how Patty longed to shout them with a clarion voice as she walked away in perfect silence, her majestic gait showin...

One could reach the Boynton house only by going up a long grass-grown lane that led from the high-road. It was a lonely place, and Aaron Boynton had bought it when he moved from...

Cephas therefore, by the middle of October, could be picturesquely and alliteratively described as being raw from repeated rejections. His bruised heart and his despised ell lit...

Now, Foxwell Baxter had never been a village Lothario at any age, nor frequented the society of such. Of late years, indeed, he had frequented no society of any kind, so that he...

The next year, Mr. Baxter, being unusually busy, offered a man a good young heifer if he would jog about the country a little and pick him up a housekeeper; a likely woman who w...

“Oh, I--I--couldn't, Cephas, thank you; I just couldn't,--don't ask me,” cried Patty, as nervous as Cephas himself now that her first offer had really come; “I'm only seventeen...

Patty could think in the dark; her healthy young body lying not uncomfortably on the bed of corn husks, and the patchwork comforter drawn up under her chin. She could think, but...

“Patty, Ivory's mother is the most pathetic creature I ever saw!” And Waitstill sat up on the sofa, her long braids of hair hanging over her shoulders, her pale face showing the...

The second Mrs. Baxter visited the attic as commanded, and in turning over the clothes in the old trunk, knew by instinct that they had belonged to her predecessor in office. So...

VIII. THE JOINER'S SHOP IX. CEPHAS SPEAKS X. ON TORY HILL XI. A JUNE SUNDAY XII. THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER XIII. HAYING TIME XIV. UNCLE BART DISCOURSES XV. IVORY'S MOTHER XVI. LOCK...

Wherever there was a barn, in Riverboro or Edgewood, one could have heard the three-legged stools being lifted from the pegs, and then would begin the music of the milk-pails; f...

Annabel was twenty-three, and to tell the truth she had palled before, more than once. She was so amiable, so well-finished,--with her smooth flaxen hair, her neat nose, her but...

It was a young and beautiful shoulder, Waitstill's, and there had always been, and would always be, a gracious curve in it where a child's head might lie in comfort. Presently w...