Marion Ames Taggart

“ Margery and she were rare foils for each other, like a jasmine blossom and a Jacqueminot rose. No one could claim for Happie regular beauty, but she was alight with life, fun, eagerness to enjoy and to give pleasure. Her hair, always lawless, gleamed like tarnished copper, her eyes danced, her dimples came and went, her lips curved and quivered—she was like an incarnate electric current. Margery was lovely, Gretta was handsome, but Happie was charming, and on the whole that is the greatest gift of the three. ”

“ Funny old Gallatin; she always suspects me,” cried Rodney. “Why, Cis; why, Holly, my darling, there’s no one on earth half as safe as I for you to play with! How dares she think I’d harm you, grieve you? Never any other man loved a girl as I love you. I’m mad about you, Cis, you—you glowing Holly-berry! I never dreamed there was such a girl on earth. When we’re married—My heavens, when we’re married! Cis, oh, Cis, you can’t dream how happy we’re to be! Did she think maybe we wouldn’t marry? Cis, we shall, we must! You’re going to marry me, aren’t you, my darling, my glowing ruby-jewel?” ”

“ It isn't only that Mardy thinks this; I feel it, or nobody knows what mad things I might do, for I'm fearfully impatient at times. It won't harm her, Wythie; the only difference is that what you and I know Prue must be taught by experience and disappointment."
"You talk like all the prophets melted into one," said Prue, impressed in spite of herself, for Rob's flashing dark eyes saw far, as her family well knew.
"Nothing that ends can satisfy any one with a mind, and much more with a soul, Prue. It is simple enough to understand, if once you realize that. Your world is too brief, dear Prudy. ”

“ Ah, my girl, my girl, what sad fools we mortals be, as Shakespeare, whom also these grave and reverend seigniors condemn, hath said! We have come here to sail by the free wind of conscience, but look you, it must be the conscience of the few, greater thraldom than it was in the Old World! Ah, Constance, Constance, we came here to escape the thraldom of men, but to do that it needs that no men came! If authority we are to have, then let it be authoritative, say I; not the mere opinion of men. My child, have you ever noted how much human nature there is in a man? ”

“ Nothing this world could offer me, nothing that you could say, would make me marry you, dearest of all women! Consider for a moment: you who are so honourable, so eager to uphold the honour of Kit, whom you love, would you have me marry one whom I knew loved and wanted someone else? Would you? It is beyond possibility. It is best for us both that we never again remotely approach to a suggestion that this might be possible. I tell you again what I have already told you: I am profoundly grateful to little Anne Berkley for averting the horrible tragedy, the dreadful mistake I came near making. ”

“ It was sea-green and white, hung with pearls and shells and narrow ribbon made to represent seaweed. A gauzy veil, white and filmy as sea-foam, floated from her beautiful hair, which hung, half loose, half confined with pearls, about her shoulders. Little Barbara looked her best in white and gold, with devices for increasing her height, and her hair piled high on her saucy head, held tilted scornfully as became both her actual self and Beatrice.
Grace Hammond was Viola, not in doublets, but in a short skirt, with sword at side and a rakish cap set boyishly on her dark hair. ”

“ I'm tired, dead tired, of fighting, Oswyth. I'd like to lie down and be taken care of, like a little ewe lamb. There are two Robs in me; one is sneakingly cowardly, and wants only to curl up in a hole and hide; and the other says: 'S't, boy! sic 'em, Rob!' And I'm up and at it again—at fate, and hard times, and Aunt Azraella, and house-work, and Mr. Flinders, and all those horrors. And then the tired, meek Rob tears around obediently, and no one dreams it's all like thumb-screws and rack to her. I'm tired of my rôle of snapping-turtle, Wythie. ”

“ You are so young, dear, and Basil is still in college. But we understand, as we have understood all along, that by and by your friendship is to broaden and deepen into much more."
"It can't, Mardy," said Wythie.
"Ah, Oswyth, everything broadens and deepens with time. Youth feels tempestuously, but years bring profounder depths. You are too much a child to know the truth of what I say to you. Be a young girl still, my Wythie, and be happy. Basil is all we could wish him to be," said Mrs. Grey, speaking out of the knowledge of her years of sacrificial love and her widowhood. ”

“ Win was but a little lad then, yet his half-brother was perfectly right about him. We all think that a great man is one with great talents, or who achieves great deeds, but, after all, if one who has a great heart, a great conscience, great truth, great steadfastness, great loyalty, isn’t a great man, I wonder who is? And Win has all these things,” said Mrs. Garden.
“Why, madrina, how nice!” cried Mary, delighted. “I never had the least idea that you cared so much about Win.”
“Win didn’t care so much about me, Mary, when I came home,” said Mrs. Garden, with a smile. ”

“ Her eyes filled with tears; she had a nature that was profoundly loving, and she was starving for kindness. Something had set her apart from the other girls who gathered with her through the winter in the little schoolhouse, and she was scolded all day long for doing her patient best in her meagre and reluctant home. Happie had guessed right that she was desperately lonely; she had not begun to conjecture how lonely, nor how much despair was mingling in that loneliness, though Gretta was but a girl of fourteen. No one could have needed nor wanted a friend more than pretty Gretta. ”

“ The children had not been accustomed to obedience, and Muriel proved intractable; Phyllis could neither win her affection nor subdue her by sternness. Lionel minded her because he loved her; in a week's time the boy had become her doglike adorer, and Phyllis loved him with pitying tenderness. The baby was like a little garden patch with the sun shining upon it through the tree branches, in alternate sunshine and shadow, and her obedience was patchy, too; no child more properly deserved the insignia of "a little curl right in the middle of her forehead." ”

“ Placid by nature, she did not fret over discomfort or danger. Trim and neat, she was a pleasant sight among the distressed, pallid faces about her, like a bit of English sky, a green English meadow, a warm English hearth in the waste of waters that led to the waste of wintry wilderness.
"What am I do to for thee, Constance?" Priscilla asked in her deep, alto voice.
"Help me get these children up into the air in a sheltered nook on deck," said Constance. "They are suffocating here."
"No, no!" cried two or three mothers. "They will be washed away, Constantia." ”

“ Kit stared at her; she rarely revealed herself to this extent. He cried: “Aunt Anne, that’s all very fine, but would you have me marry a woman whom I did not love for ignoble, selfish motives?”
“Ignoble!” cried his aunt, sharply. “Do you call ambitions such as any manly man would leap toward, ignoble? Why, what else is there in life but its prizes? The bigger the better, but prizes at least. Selfish, yes! Who isn’t selfish? Children are frightened by words, not men. Of course you’re selfish. But if you enjoy beclouding your conscience tell yourself you’ll use your attainment unselfishly. ”

“ One bright, frosty afternoon, when the earth was white and the sky brilliantly blue, Cis went off alone to walk in the park. A homesick spell was upon her; she was homesick for Miss Braithwaite, for the shadowy library and its glowing hearth; for Mr. Lucas’ office and its interests, the clever, keen men who came there talking of great matters; her sense of being part of a world moved by levers hidden in that office. And she wondered why it was that for some time she had heard no word of Anselm Lancaster. ”

“ I am not inclined to think your new life will be entirely free from annoyance, since I am moving you to Fifty-Eighth Street, and not to paradise. But I think it will be easier than braving the world daily as you now do. All these years, more than five, my girl, ever since your widowhood, I have watched you cheerfully, unflaggingly working for your children, teaching them, putting under foot and out of sight your own sorrow and weariness of body and mind. Dear Charlotte, like the good little girls in the story books your reward has come. ”

“ If I don’t get well, I’m going to try not to be a failure, and be brave,” she said.
Gladys went over to her and kissed her with a sweet gravity that was pretty to see in the little girl who had been so shallow and vain. “My kind of blindness was worse than yours, Gwen,” she said. “You’d be nicer than I ever could be if you lost all your eyes.”
“Gwen isn’t a spider, and Gwen is going to get well,” cried Jan, laughing to keep from crying.
Gladys left the room hastily and Jan perched on the bedside, holding Tommy Traddles’s paw in one hand and Gwen’s fingers in the other. ”

“ The orchestra sounded a few bars, and suddenly the sixteen dancers began to sing to the old French gavotte the words which Rob had written, beginning the dance at the same time. In breathless silence the audience watched and listened. The colours blended and contrasted, the girls flushed and dimpled, carrying their heads regally under their powdered hair, while the young men, not less gorgeous in their degree, led them forth with courtly bendings of their powdered heads, managing their swords and the laced hats which they carried with creditable grace and dignity. ”

“ Dame Eliza said. "Damaris is alive only through you. However you love her, yet her life is her mother's debt to you. Much, much more do I owe you, Constantia Hopkins, and none knows it better than myself. Let be. Words are poor. There is something yet to be done. After it you may thank me, or deny me as you will, but between us there will be a new beginning, its shaping shall be as you will. Till that is done which I must do, let there be no more talk between us."
Puzzled, but impressed by her stepmother's manner and manifest distress, Constance acquiesced. ”

“ Isn’t your aunt a dear to get me a horse like this? Isn’t she an old darling, anyway? She’s truly fond of me, I’m gratefully sure of that. It’s a big thing to win the love of a lonely old woman. She loves me next to you, Kit, and I’m not unappreciative. How these horses keep pace! What a pleasant thing it is to ride at the same gait, in unison of hoofbeats! That’s a sermon in brief, though unintentional, and it’s for you to draw the moral. So this is Daphne Woods! It’s the loveliest spot I ever saw. I’m glad that you are showing me this shadowy, green, mystic loveliness for the first time. ”

“ Laura looked at Ralph very seriously. "I am going to write a song for him, words and all. It is going to be very beautiful,—sad, maybe, but beautiful," she said. "I am going to show how he came cloaked and shadowy, like the dawn, and how he burst forth, like the morning, with all the beauty, the music of the world. It will probably be my best song, for I would do anything to pay him for the way he played. I'm not afraid of him, like the girls, because I'm a musician too. Musicians and poets are never understood." ”

“ It is too dear, too perfectly the spring that quenches our thirst for unfailing love ever to look to us withered and age-stricken as it must to strangers. The young Scollards had never stopped to consider whether their mother was quite elderly, or very youthful—her age was swallowed up in the fact of her motherhood. In reality Charlotte Scollard was but just approaching the milestone of the fourth decade. She was a pale, slenderly built woman, with a worn, sweet face, like Margery's, but older and saddened. ”

“ A married man! Married to you, Cis! Say, Cis, don’t you think you could see it, if you looked hard enough? Love me, I mean?”
“Tom, dear,” said Cis a little wistfully, for the honest boy’s voice shook, and his eyes were as imploring as a dog’s eyes. “I like you heaps, better than before I went away. I didn’t know you so well then, and besides you’ve come out a great deal. But I couldn’t love you, Tommy; not that way. I’m sorry, dear. You are a fine boy, and the girl who does marry you will be lucky. It never will be me, and it wouldn’t be right to let you think it ever might be. Sorry, Tom! ”

“ Constance was in despair. The bitter mockery in Giles's young face, the bleak unhappiness in his eyes stabbed her heart. She knew him too well to doubt that this mood was dangerous.
"My own dear brother!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. "Oh, don't steel yourself so bitterly! Father loves you so much that he is stern with you, but it will all come right; it must, once this hot anger that you both share is past. You are too alike, that is all! Beg his pardon, Giles, but repeat that your word is enough to prove you innocent of the accusation. ”

“ Since we are distributing pity, Motherums, we’d better shed some on Kit and Anne, if they are interested in each other, for Miss Carrington would certainly make the course of their true love run uncommonly rough! I must go home to my daughter. Isn’t it thrilling to think that we may have seen the curtain rise on an old-fashioned love drama, with a rival, a stern parent—an aunt comes to the same thing when she holds the hero’s inheritance—the princess whom the young lover should marry, everything properly cast! Anne, you witch-child, you are an uncanny elf! ”

“ We are all merely molecules, by comparison, but working together for a result," said Bruce. "You can make life sweet and wholesome all around you. You can help three big fellows, for instance, to march straight in a world full of pitfalls; you can cheer everybody and set the best of examples, which preaches wordlessly, to all who come near you. I think, as a unit, Rob, you might be considered a success. If all units did their cheerful best, as it is done in this little grey house, the collective result would be the millennium." ”

“ It was not often that one could see so many winsome creatures together as Robert was entertaining that night, with a keen sense of the fact and no little pride in his guests.
Not Laura alone enjoyed the music of the Mendelssohn overture, but Laura did enjoy it, leaning far over the edge of the box, her pale face responsive to its spell. Then the curtain went up and the girls were admitted to fairyland, to the realm of visions, under the domain of sleep-like trance in which the actual world was no more a reality. Shakespeare's poetry, aided by the skill of to-day, wrought the spell. ”

“ In England shovelboard is one thing; in Plymouth a second thing, and two things are not the same as one thing. I am disgusted with your father, but what good does it do me to speak? Never am I heeded but rather am I flouted by the Hopkins brood, young and old, which is why I never speak, but eat my heart out in silence and patience, knowing that had I married as I might have married—aye, and that many times, I'd have you know—I'd not be here among sands and marshes and Indians and barrens, slaving for ungrateful people who think to show their better blood by treating me as they best know how! ”

“ In less than three months I shall marry Richard Latham. That sums up all that I could say to you, Kit.”
“But I love you! You have no idea how I want you, love you!” cried Kit.
“And that you’re not to say to me!” said Anne with a stern monotony of voice, with which she bridled her pain as she saw the change in Kit’s sunny face.
“It is easy for you. You don’t care, after all! I suppose women can’t love as a man does,” said Kit.
An expression of adoring love and pity flitted over Anne’s face. ”

“ I don’t suppose anybody, no matter how young and strong and jolly she may be, can help feeling alone when she is alone! It’s strange that Miss Braithwaite wants me now. I have been growing restless, unsatisfied; I don’t know what is wrong. I don’t enjoy being here. I love the baby and Nan, but—I’m ashamed, but Miss Braithwaite, and Father Morley and you, and even the big things in Mr. Lucas’ office, have all spoiled me for nice, steady, dull little days! I’m not better than Nan in brains; not nearly as good in the other sense, but, I’ve been fed on stronger food. ”

“ But I know one thing: I can not possibly rest till I find out exactly what it is that is in my mind. Isn't Lester fine; don't you like him?"
"How can I help it, when he is so like his uncle?" retorted Rob. "There is no other man in the world equal to your father, Hester, or whom I love so much."
"Not Battalion B?" suggested Hester, fearing to narrow her question to one member of that battalion.
"Battalion B are boys," retorted Rob. "Your cousin seems to find our Prudy beautiful."
"Lester is an artist," said Hester. "Prue is the handsomest girl I ever saw, but she isn't Roberta." ”