Up the Hill and Over

Mrs. Coombe had been in the city a week when one morning Ann, who was feeling lonely without Jane, sat swinging upon the five-barred gate and whistling intermittently for Bubble...

Two sandwiches, an apple, and a glass of water may save a man from starvation, but they do not go far towards satisfying the reviving appetite of a convalescent. Walking with br...

Ester was sitting upon the back porch, hulling strawberries and watching with absent amusement the tireless efforts of Jane to induce a very fat and entirely brainless pup to sh...

We all know that strange remoteness into which one wakes from out deep sleep. Though the eye be open, the Ego is not there to use it. For an immeasurable second, the awakener kn...

"In order to make you understand, I'll have to go back," said the doctor musingly, "a long way back. Some of the story you already know, but now I want you to know it all. But f...

Meanwhile, unconscious of her step-mother's troubled musings, Esther was loitering delightfully on her way from school. Aunt Amy, who never looked at a clock, but who always kne...

We have stated elsewhere that Coombe was conservative, but by this we do not mean to imply that it was benighted. Far from it! True, it talked a great deal before it ventured up...

It required some persuasion to induce Aunt Amy to consent to see the doctor. Doctors, she had found (with the single exception of Dr. Coombe), were terribly unreasonable. They a...

Henry Callandar, resting neck-deep in the cool green swimming pool, tossed the wet hair out of his eyes and whistled ingratiatingly to a watching robin. A delightful sense of gu...

Two days after the installation of what Mrs. Sykes persisted in calling the "spinal mattress," Esther Coombe was late in getting home from school. As was usually the case when t...

The next day was the day of the Presbyterian Sunday school picnic. It was bound to be beautiful weather, because it always was. The Presbyterians seemed to have an understanding...

Coombe is a pretty place. It has broad streets, quiet and tree-lined. It has sunny, empty lots where children play. No one is crowded or shut in. The houses stand in their own g...

"Well, did you _ever!_" exclaimed Esther. She was a little tired and more than a little excited, a condition which conduces to hysteria, and collapsing upon the end of the float...

"Perhaps it's catching? Do you want mother? She is upstairs and her door is locked. Perhaps she'll be down in a little while. She said Esther was to stay in and entertain you, b...

"It amounts to this, then," said Willits presently. "You are cured. The balance is swinging true again. It has taken a long time, but the cure is all the more complete for that....

Zerubbabel Burk sat upon his stool of office in the doctor's consulting room, swinging his legs. Would-be discoverers of perpetual motion might have received many hints from Bub...

Perhaps never, in all her life of inopportune arrivals, had Miss Annabel been so truly welcome--or so bitterly resented! Esther turned to her with a heart-sob of relief, the min...

Bending over the form of his lost wife, Henry Callandar forgot Esther. His mind, careful of its sanity, removed her instantly from the possibility of thought. She was gone--whis...

Esther and her step-mother set out upon their homeward walk in silence. The older woman's face was drawn and bitter, Esther's thoughtful and sad. Though there seemed no reason f...

It became quickly known in Coombe that, owing to Mrs. Coombe's delicate health, the wedding would take place much sooner than had been expected. A sea voyage, it was conceded, w...

Undoubtedly Esther slept better that night for the thought of the new doctor. It cannot be said that the doctor slept better because of her. In fact he lay awake thinking of her...

As Esther walked away, demurely acquiescent, by the side of the Rev. Mr. Macnair she was conscious of a conflict of emotions. The sight of the doctor's disappointed face as he s...

Mrs. Coombe sank gracefully into a veranda chair. Out of the corners of her eyes she cast a swift glance at the face of her step-daughter and, as the girl was not looking, permi...

"But hadn't I better see it on you just once," suggested Esther. "Some trifle may have been forgotten and a missing hook and eye might spoil the effect of the whole thing."

Autumn that year was short and golden. Winter came early. In November it stormed, thawed, stormed again and began to freeze in earnest. The frost bit deeply but one night when i...

Miss A. Milligan stood before the door of her select dressmaking parlours, meditatively picking her teeth with a needle. We hasten to observe that her teeth were quite clean and...

It was a curious luncheon party. The host was abstracted, nervous, far from being his usual bland self. The guest was subdued, silent, uneasy for no reason at all. The hostess,...

Mrs. Sykes thought much about her boarder in those days and, for a wonder, said very little. Gossip as she was, she could, in the service of one she liked, be both wise and reti...

Esther carried the tea-tray into the kitchen and stood for a moment beside the open window letting the sweet air from the garden cool the colour in her cheeks. Through the doorw...

Tired though he must have been, the doctor had never felt less like sleep. There was a fever in his blood which the cool quietness of the spare room could not soothe. The lavend...

The cheery singing ended abruptly with the collapse of the singer upon a particularly inviting slope of grass. He was very dusty. He was very hot. The way from Wimbleton to Womb...

It felt like the tongue of a friendly dog. He seemed to have been dreaming about dogs. Something soft and cold lay on his head. It felt like a wet handkerchief ... the pain had...

It is the onlooker who sees most of the game and Aunt Amy was an ideal onlooker. Always self-effacing and silent, she was now more silent and self-effacing still. Consequently t...

The manner in which Dr. Callandar spent that tragic Sunday is not clearly on record. We have watched Esther so closely that he has been permitted to escape our observation, and...

When a man of thirty-five has at last shaken himself free from the burden of an unhappy love affair, he is not particularly disposed to welcome an emotional reawakening. He know...

It was a perfect day for the wedding. Autumn at her brightest and gayest before her new bright robes began to brown. Soft air, mellow sun, cool-lipped breeze, horizon veiled in...

A robin hopped upon the window sill of School-house Number Fifteen and peered cautiously into the room. He had no business there during lesson hours and the arrival of Mary's li...