The Three Miss Kings: An Australian Story

That evening Mr. Yelverton was leisurely finishing his dinner at the club when a note was brought to him. He thought he knew the writing, though he had never seen it before, and...

Patty went "home," and stayed there for two years; but it was never home to her, though all her friends and connections, save one, were with her--because that one was absent. Sh...

Yes, it was their father's will--the will they had vainly hunted for a year ago, little thinking what manner of will it was; executed when Eleanor was a baby in long clothes, an...

There was no room for doubt as to what Paul Brion had meant. When the evening of the next day came--on which there was no Parliament sitting--he returned to No. 7 to dinner, and...

It was not much after three o'clock when Elizabeth walked slowly upstairs to her room, bearing single-handed her own responsibilities. Now that she was alone and undisturbed, sh...

Out of the many Cup Days that have gladdened the hearts of countless holiday-makers on the Flemington course assembled, perhaps that of 1880 was the most "all round" satisfactor...

Mr. Yelverton walked into the passage, possessed himself of the portmanteau, and descended the stairs to the little hall below. The wide-eyed maid-of-all-work hastened to offer...

The bride and bridegroom did not return to Melbourne until the day before Christmas--Friday the 24th, which was a warm, and bright, and proper summer day, but working up for a s...

The girls were boiling a kettle and making afternoon tea, while the men were getting their horses and buggy furniture together, at about four o'clock. Elizabeth was on her knees...

"Is it possible that we have only been away for nine months?" murmured Elizabeth, as the little steamer worked its way up to the well-remembered jetty, and she looked once more...

They slept for two nights on the tip of the steamer's nose, and they did not roll off. They had a long, delightful day at sea, no more troubled with seasickness than were the gu...

They did not wait for the next steamer, but hurried back to Melbourne by train and coach, and reached Myrtle Street once more at a little before midnight, the girls dazed with s...

The weather was scorchingly hot and a thunderstorm brewing when the girls sat down to their frugal lunch at mid-day. It was composed of bread and butter and pickled fish, for wh...

When Paul Brion bade Mrs. Aarons good-night, he perceived that she was a little cold to him, and rather wondered at himself that he did not feel inclined either to resent or to...

Paul Brion, meanwhile, plodded on in his old groove, which no longer fitted him as it used to do, and vexed the soul of his benevolent landlady with the unprecedented shortness...

"I don't think you know Mr. Brion," said Mr. Yelverton, first lifting his hat and shaking hands with Mrs. Duff-Scott, and then, with an airy and audacious cheerfulness, introduc...

The dinner party on Christmas Eve was the first of a series of brilliant festivities, extending all through the hot last week of 1880, and over the cool new year (for which fire...

After all, Elizabeth's wedding ceremonies, though shorn of much customary state, were not so wildly unconventional as to shock the feelings of society. Save in the matter of tha...

When Mrs. Duff-Scott came to hear of all this, she was terribly vexed with Patty. Indeed, no one dared to tell her the whole truth, and to this day she does not know that the en...

While Mrs. Westmoreland thus disports herself in the gay world, Mrs. Brion pursues her less brilliant career in much peace and quietness. When she and Paul came back to Australi...

Melbourne people, when they go to bed, chain up their doors carefully, and bar all their windows, lest the casual burglar should molest them. Bush people, no more afraid of the...

Patty and her sisters very nearly had their first quarrel over Paul Brion. Patty said he was impertinent and patronising, that he presumed upon their friendless position to pay...

How they should dress themselves for Mrs. Aarons's Friday was a question as full of interest for our girls as if they had been brought up in the lap of wealth and fashion. They...

He was talking to Patty and Eleanor in the garden when Elizabeth went out to him, looking cool and colonial in a silk coat and a solar topee. The girls were chatting gaily; the...

Our girls still sat in their corner, but a change had come over them within the last few minutes. A stout man sitting near them was talking to Elizabeth across Eleanor's lap--El...

Some hours earlier on the same evening, Eleanor, dressing for dinner and the ball in her spacious bedroom at Mrs. Duff-Scott's house, felt that _she_, at any rate, was arming he...

When Elizabeth went into the room, watchfully attended by the major, who was deeply interested in her proceedings, she was perhaps the happiest woman of all that gala company. S...

On a Thursday evening in the race week--two days after the "Cup," Mrs. Duff-Scott took her girls to the Town Hall to one of a series of concerts that were given at that time by...

Mrs. Duff-Scott's drawing-room, at nine or ten o'clock on Friday evening, was a pleasant sight. Very spacious, very voluptuous, in a subdued, majestic, high-toned way; very dim-...

When he had turned and left her, Elizabeth faced her sisters with that vivid blush still on her cheeks, and a general appearance of embarrassment that was too novel to escape no...

A little group of their male attendants stood in the lobby, while Mrs. Duff-Scott and the girls put on their wraps in the cloak-room. When the ladies reappeared, they fell into...

If we could trace back the wonderful things that happen to us "by accident," or, as some pious souls believe, by the operation of a special Providence or in answer to prayer, to...

"Then we will say Melbourne to begin with. Not for a permanence, but until we have gained a little more experience," said Patty, with something of regret and reluctance in her v...

It was between two and three o'clock; Mr. Brion reposed in his arm-chair, smoking a little, talking a little to Elizabeth who sat beside him, listening dreamily to the piano, an...

Mr. Brion stood at his gate when the little buggy drove up, beaming with contentment and hospitality. He respectfully begged that Mr. Yelverton would grant them the favour of hi...

Mrs. Duff-Scott came for her gossip on Saturday afternoon, and it was a long one, and deeply interesting to all concerned. The girls took her to their trustful hearts, and told...

Meanwhile, Major Duff-Scott took charge of Elizabeth, and he was very well satisfied with the arrangement that left her to his care. He always preferred a mature woman to a youn...

Paul Brion was wakened from his sleep next morning by the sound of Mrs. Duff-Scott's carriage wheels and prancing horses, and sauntering to his sitting-room window about ten min...

On the second of January, in the year 1880, three newly-orphaned sisters, finding themselves left to their own devices, with an income of exactly one hundred pounds a year a-pie...

Mr. Yelverton did not return home from his mission until Mrs. Duff-Scott's farewell kettle-drum was in full blast. He found the two drawing-rooms filled with a fashionable crowd...

Eleanor, like Patty, withstood the seductions of English life and miscellaneous English admirers, and lived to be Miss Yelverton in her turn, unappropriated and independent. And...

But they slept well in their strange beds, and by morning all their little troubles had disappeared. It was impossible not to suppose that the pets "at home" were making themsel...

They decided to sell their furniture--with the exception of the piano and the bureau, and sundry treasures that could bestowed away in the latter capacious receptacle; and, on b...

They had an early breakfast, dressed themselves with great care in their best frocks and the new bonnets, and, each carrying an umbrella, set forth with a cheerful resolve to se...

Elizabeth went upstairs at a run, and found Patty and Eleanor trying to make Mrs. Duff-Scott understand who Paul Brion was, what his father was, and his profession, and his char...

"Stand here, and I can shelter you a little," he said, in a quiet tone that contrasted refreshingly with the hoarse excitement around them. He drew her close to his side by the...

Patty softened down the terms in which she made her declaration of independence, when she found that it was received in so proper a spirit. She asked them if they had _any objec...

Mrs. Aarons kept her promise, and called upon the Kings on Saturday. Mrs. M'Intyre saw her get down at the gate of No. 6, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, watched the bro...

Prosaic as were their surroundings and their occupation--sitting at a long table, he at the end and she at the corner on his left hand, amongst a scattered crowd of hungry folk,...

Late in the evening when the sea was lit up with a young moon, Mr. Brion, having given them a great deal of serious advice concerning their money and other business affairs, esc...

It was a pity that Paul Brion, looking at Patty's charming figure in the gaslight, could not have looked into her heart. It is a pity, for us all, that there is no Palace of Tru...

While Elizabeth was thus happily absorbed in her "young man," and Eleanor making an evident conquest of Mr. Westmoreland, Patty, who was rather accustomed to the lion's share of...

and strawberries, rustling to and fro amongst the flowers and fine ladies, flaunting herself in this dazzling crowd of rich and idle people, while he plodded at his desk or smok...