The Upas Tree: A Christmas Story for all the Year

The small door in the stove stood open, letting a ruddy glow shine from within, a poor substitute for the open fires blazing merrily in England on this chill November evening; y...

Dick arrived very early the next morning, having to be off again by the twelve o'clock train, in order to reach that evening the place where he was due to spend Christmas.

It was Ronnie's last evening in England. The parting, which had seemed so far away, must take place on the morrow. It took all Helen's bright courage to keep up Ronnie's spirits.

Precisely how long she remained alone in her sitting-room, Helen never knew; but it cannot have been the long hours it seemed, seeing that Simpkins did not appear to fetch the t...

As Aubrey Treherne, on his way back from despatching the telegram, stood in the general entrance hall, fumbling with the latch-key at the door of his own flat, a tall young man...

Ronald West stood at the window of his wife's sitting-room, looking across the bright garden-borders to the wide park beyond, and wondering how on earth he should open the subje...

"Hullo, West!" said Aubrey, kindly. "You put in your half-hour quite unexpectedly. You were trying, in a sleepy fashion, to tell me how you came to purchase this fine 'cello; bu...

It had been a great effort to let it go to the station without her. In fact she had ordered it to the front door, and put on her hat and coat in readiness.

When Ronnie came to himself, emerging quite suddenly from a long, confused dream, which had held many voices, many happenings over which he had exercised no control and which we...

When he came in sight of the lodge, it reminded him of an old-fashioned Christmas card; the large iron gates, their grey stone supports covered with moss and lichen and surmount...

He felt like the prodigal, who had planned to suggest as his only possible desert, a place among the hired servants, but was so lifted into realisation of sonship by the father'...

Ronnie kept pace with the train long enough to say: "I wish you wouldn't call it the 'kid,' Dick; it is the 'Infant.' And Helen declines to talk of it."

After the quiet night on the steamer, the landing in darkness at Harwich, and the steady run up to town, alone in a first-class compartment, he felt momentarily confused by the...

"How long would it take you, Ronnie?" "Well--including the journey out, and the journey back, I ought to have a clear seven months. If we could get off in a fortnight, we might...

The trees were leafless, the garden beds empty. The park looked sodden, dank and cheerless. Summer was long dead and over, yet frosts had not begun, bringing suggestions of mist...

A man who has yielded himself to unrestrained wrong-doing, suffers with a sharpness of cold misery unknown to the brave true heart, however hard or lonely may be his honourable...

On all around grew that sense of the herald angels, bending over a waiting world, poised upon outstretched wings. The hush had fallen which carries the mind away to the purple h...

He carried his 'cello in one hand, its case and bow, which he had picked up in the hall, in the other; but he had for the moment completely forgotten the Infant.

Ronnie returned to the Florentine chair, took the 'cello between his knees, placed his thumb behind its polished neck and his fingers on the ebony finger-board. He let them glid...

Having once made up her mind that it was right and wise to let Ronnie go, Helen did not falter. She immediately took control of all necessary arrangements. Nothing was forgotten...