The Window-Gazer

"Initials, only, lack character," objected Desire. "There is nothing distinctive about 'Mrs. B. H. Spence'. It doesn't balance well, either. I think I'll decide upon the 'Benis...

He felt suddenly ravenous and hurried into his clothes. It is really wonderful how all kinds of problems give place to the need for a wash and breakfast. Somewhere outside he co...

"There is one thing which I simply do not understand." Miss Davis dug the point of a destructive parasol into the well-kept gravel of the drive and allowed a glance of deep seri...

DEAR and Venerable Bones: Your fatherly letter came too late. What was going to happen has happened. But I will be honest and admit that its earlier arrival would have made no d...

Desire was seated upon a moss-covered rock, hugging her knees and gazing out to sea. It was her favorite attitude and, according to Professor Spence, a very dangerous one, espec...

Desire was smiling as she left Dr. Rogers' office. It was a smile compounded of derision and relief--a shamefaced smile which admitted an opinion of herself very far from flatte...

Luncheon, for which Li Ho had provided eggs both boiled and fried, was eaten alone. His hostess did not honor him with her company, nor did her father return. Li Ho was attentiv...

Mornings are beautiful all over the earth but Nature keeps a special kind of morning for early summer use at Friendly Bay. In sudden clearness, in chill sweetness, in almost awf...

It may be said with fairness that the reception given by Miss Campion for her nephew's bride left Bainbridge thoughtful. They had expected the bride to be different, and they ha...

Time, in quiet neighborhoods, like water in a pool, slips in and out leaving the pool but little changed. Only when one is waiting for something dreaded or desired do the days d...

The professor's mild eyes blinked at her in surprise. "Good!" he said with satisfaction. "That is the first remark suitable to your extreme youth that I've ever heard you make....

To understand Aunt Caroline's arrival at Friendly Bay we should have to understand Aunt Caroline, and that, as Euclid says, is absurd. Therefore we shall have to take the arriva...

The professor was smoking under the maples by the front steps when the car drove up. He looked very cool, very comfortable and very sure of himself--entirely too sure of himself...

The long Transcontinental puffed steadily up toward the white-capped peaks of a continent. They were a day out from Vancouver--a day during which Desire had sat upon the observa...

Professor Spence sat upon an upturned keg--and shivered. No one had told him that there might be fog and he had not happened to think of it for himself. Still, fog in a coast ci...

Although it was a fast express whose speed might well provoke the admiration of travellers, in one traveller it provoked nothing save grim endurance. Beside the consuming impati...

It seemed to Benis Spence afterward that during that last day, while the train plunged steadily down to sea level, he passed every boundary ever set for the patience of man. It...

"It isn't fair," she thought passionately. "It's all very well to talk, but it does make a difference--it does. If I'm not his secretary what am I?" A hot blush crimsoned her wh...

The weather on the day of Desire's reception could scarcely have been bettered. Rain had fallen during the night; fallen just sufficiently to lay the dust on the drive and liber...

Miss Farr said not. She said that it would be certain to clear up in a day or two. "And then," she said, "you will forget that it ever rained."

"And that," said Desire later in the day as she related her experiences to the professor, "that was the idea with which I left them! I shan't have to teach again, shall I, Benis?"

One wonders what would happen to our admirable muddle of a world, if even a minority of its inhabitants were suddenly to embrace consistency. It would, presumably, be a world st...

It was the day before Friday. Friday, so very near, seemed already palpably present in the surcharged air of the cottage. No one mentioned it, but that made its nearness more po...

Desire was conscious of a brown and gabled station with a bow-window and flower-beds, a long platform where baggage trucks lumbered, the calling of taxi-men, a confused noise of...

"I have told Olive," went on Aunt Caroline, "that Mrs. Spence had received news of her father which was far from satisfactory and that she had left for Vancouver by the early mo...

To give exhaustive reasons for the impulse which brought Miss Mary Davis to Bainbridge at this particular time would be to delve too deeply into the complex psychology of that l...

Desire was waking. She had slept without a dream and woke wonderingly to the shadows of dancing leaves upon the white canvas above her. It was a long time since she had slept in...

Benis Spence had taken his medical adviser up the slope to the Indian burying-ground. It was the one place within reasonable radius where they were not likely to be interrupted...

With the recovery of a leg sufficiently workable in the matter of climbing stairs, Dr. Farr's boarder had resigned the family couch in the sitting-room and had retired to his sp...

Miss Davis had been in Bainbridge a week. Her cold was entirely better and her nerves, she said, much rested. "This is such a restful place," murmured Miss Davis, selecting her...

If thoughts are things (and Professor Spence continues to argue that they are) a mistaken thought is quite as powerful a reality as the other kind. Only let it be conceived with...

It seemed to Desire, waiting in the garden, that the Sergeant was taking an unnecessarily long time in telling his story. She had thought it best that he should be left alone to...

Possibly some time in the past the Spences had been a leisured people. They had brought from the old country the tradition of afternoon tea. Many others had, no doubt, done the...

It seems incredible and yet it is a fact that Bainbridge never knew that young Mrs. Spence had run away. Full credit for this must be given to Miss Caroline Campion, who never r...

No letter yet from you, Bones; Bainbridge must be having the measles. Or perhaps I am not allowing for the fact that it takes almost a fortnight to go and come across this littl...

Salt in the air and the breath of pine and cedar are excellent sleep inducers. Professor Spence had not expected to sleep that night; yet he did sleep. He awoke to find the sun...

DEAR Idiot: I knew you would get it--and you got it. Perhaps after this you will learn to treat your sciatic nerve with proper respect. But there is a worse complaint than sciat...

Nevertheless, and despite the taste of ashes, one must live and take one's morning bath. Desire thought, not without pleasure, of the pool beneath the tree. Wrapped in her blue...

DEAR Bones: Chortle if you want to--your worst prognostications have come true. The unexpectedness of the sciatic nerve, as set forth in your parting discourse, has amply proved...