Unlucky: A Fragment of a Girl's Life

An old orchard, its trees gnarled and moss-grown, their blossoms lying thick upon the grass beneath. A little to the left the embowered gables and red chimneys of an old house....

Helen's attempts to interest her father in Harold were crowned with success almost beyond her hopes. Colonel Desmond, who was fond of children, had been already attracted by the...

Spring did not fulfil its early promise that year. Those few warm days were followed by long weeks of bitter east wind, during which the tender green leaves grew dark and shrive...

Dearly as Mrs. Desmond loved London and the comforts of her own home, she had no desire to spend the last days of sultry July in Bloomsbury Square. The Grange being no longer, i...

It must be allowed that Mrs. Desmond, with the best dispositions in the world towards children in general and her most perplexing little stepdaughter Helen in particular, was no...

"Because," began Helen, with an ominous look in her stepmother's direction, "because"--but just then that lady, who had been listening to her husband with one ear and to Helen w...

Helen was standing in the hall listening to the retreating wheels of the cab that bore Cousin Mary away, and trying hard to keep back her tears. It was the late afternoon of an...

The speaker was a cousin of Mrs. Desmond's, a certain Miss Macleod, or Cousin Mary as she was generally called by the younger members of her acquaintances. Mary Macleod lived in...

motioned to Helen to go, and Helen obeyed unhesitatingly. Henceforward she told herself, as in the glad morning light she knelt in prayer for her father, there must be no more d...