White Lilac; or the Queen of the May

Mrs James White stood at her cottage door casting anxious glances up at the sky, and down the hill towards the village. If it were fine the rector's wife had promised to come an...

But Mrs Greenways was wrong. Twelve more springs came and went, cold winds blew round the cottage on the hill, winter snow covered it, summer sun blazed down on its unsheltered...

Whilst all this was going on at the farm, Mrs White had been busy as usual in the cottage on the hill--her mind full of Lilac, and her hands full of the Rectory washing. It was...

On the top of the ridge of hills which rose behind Mrs White's cottage there was a great beech wood, which could be reached in two ways. One was by following a rough stony road...

Agnetta had been quite wrong in saying that Lilac had any idea of being Queen. At the school that afternoon, when amidst breathless silence the Mistress had counted up the votes...

A few days after this Lilac sat on her little stool in her accustomed corner, listening in a dreamy way to the muffled voices of Mrs Pinhorn and Mrs Wishing. They spoke low, not...

Inside it was dusky and cool. There was a sweet smell of hay and new milk, and it was very quiet, the silence only disturbed when an impatient cow stamped her foot or swished he...

"Who is the honest man? He who doth still and strongly good pursue, To God, his neighbour and himself most true, Whom neither force nor fawning can Unpin or wrench from giving a...

Lilac could hardly believe her own good fortune when nothing happened the next morning to prevent her visit, not even a cross word nor a complaint from her aunt, who seemed to h...

She was awakened the next morning by trampling noises in the stable below, and starting up could not at first make out where she was. The sun was shining through a rift in the l...

Months came and went. August turned his beaming yellow face on the waving cornfields, and passed on leaving them shorn and bare. Then came September bending under his weight of...

As the door closed on Lilac, the news burst forth from Mrs Greenways in such a torrent that it was difficult at first to follow, but at length she managed to make clear to her a...