To Love

"And there is little Dickie," Mabel said; she stood, one hand on the cot, her grey eyes lowered--"he has brought such happiness into my life that sometimes I am afraid."

The black days of September lay like a cloud over the whole country. News came of the fall of Namur; the retreat from Mons; the German Army before the gates of Paris. There was...

"Love can tell, and Love alone, Whence the million stars were strewn; Why each atom knows its own; How, in spite of woe and death, Gay is life, and sweet is breath."

It did not need much intuition on Mrs. Grant's part to know herself suspicious of Dick's behaviour. She listened to Mabel's information about the two young ladies he was bringin...

Mabel had shampooed her mother's hair, following out with unending patience the minute instructions which the process always involved. She had rinsed it in four relays of hot wa...

"Out of my dreams, I fashioned a flower; Nursed it within my heart, Thought it my dower. What wind is this that creeps within and blows Roughly away the petals of my rose?"

The Grants were sitting at breakfast in their small, red-walled dining-room. Richard, commonly called Dick, at the end of the table, Mabel at the one side and Mrs. Grant in the...

All the way up the river from the Nore after they had picked up the pilot the ship moved through a dense fog. A huge P. & O. liner, heavily laden with passengers and mails, she...

Colonel Rutherford and Joan had had breakfast early that morning, for Uncle John was going to London to attend some big meeting, at which, much to his own secret gratification,...

"Aye, thought and brain were there, some kind Of faculty that men mistake For talent, when their wits are blind,-- An aptitude to mar and break What others diligently make."

"But through all the joy I knew--I only-- How the hostel of my heart lay bare and cold, Silent of its music, and how lonely! Never, though you crown me with your gold. Shall I f...

There followed a weary time for Joan. The poem she had repeated on her first morning at Shamrock House had to be recalled again and again and fell away finally from its glad mea...

"Ah, sweet, and we too, can we bring One sigh back, bid one smile revive? Can God restore one ruined thing, Or he who slays our souls alive Make dead things thrive?"

"I knew such kind of things were bound to happen," she grumbled fiercely, "if she joined in with a girl like that Miss Bellairs. I have never held and I never will hold with you...

Joan was not to start her new work till the following Monday. She was to be typist--her first real post filled her with some degree of self-conscious pride--to the Editor of the...

"I have forgotten you! Wherefore my days Run gladly, as in those white hours gone by Before I learnt to love you. Now have I Returned to that old freedom, where the rays Of your...

That had been Joan's introduction to the manager of the Brown travelling company. He was a large man, with his neck set in such rolls of fat that quick movement was an impossibi...

For the first week in her new post Joan was kept very busy putting things--as Miss Bacon described it--to rights. She had also, she discovered, to run errands for Miss Bacon sev...

Not till she felt Mabel's soft warm lips on her cheek and knew herself held in the other's arms, did Joan wake to the fact that the marriage was finished and that she was Dick's...

Fanny was a real daughter of joy. The name is given to many who in no sense of the word near its meaning. To Fanny, to be alive was to laugh; she had a nature which shook aside...

Joan did not see Aunt Janet again. Miss Abercrombie carried messages backwards and forwards between the two, but even Miss Abercrombie's level-headed arguments could not move Au...

"I hope not;" Fanny spoke, for her, fiercely. "I shall hate to lose you, honey, but after all I don't stand for much, and you aren't meant for this kind of world. You can't get...

The wave of enthusiasm caused by the War swept even Fanny into its whirlpool of emotion. For several days she haunted the streets, following now this crowd, now that; buying inn...

"Oh, wisdom never comes when it is gold, And the great price we pay for it full worth. We have it only when we are half earth, Little avails that coinage to the old."

Youth can nearly always rely upon sleep to build up new strength, new hope, new courage. If you have got to a stage in your life when sleep fails you, if night means merely a lo...

"Life is good, joy runs high, Between English earth and sky; Death is death, but we shall die To the song on your bugles blown--England, To the stars on your bugles blown."

"Let this be said between us here, One's love grows green when one turns grey; This year knows nothing of last year, To-morrow has no more to say To yesterday."

There are some natures which cannot live with any happiness in drab surroundings. Atmosphere affects everyone more or less; but whereas there are a few fortunate ones who can ri...

The words pounded across Joan's mind over and over again. She struggled in obedience to their message against the waves of sleep that lapped her round. Struggled and fought, til...

Following Rose's suggestion, and because for the time being there really seemed nothing for her to do, unless she could show herself a little better trained, Joan joined the Cou...

"You don't believe in marriage, and I can't afford to marry"--Gilbert Stanning laughed, but the sound was not very mirthful and his eyes, as he glanced at his companion, were un...

"Of all strange things in this strange new world Most strange is this; Ever my lips must speak and smile Without your kiss. Ever mine eyes must see, despite Those eyes they miss."