Miss Stone

“ Stone was seated before the fire, reading the newspaper. A comprehensive cigar was securely wedged in the corner of his mouth, and his long legs, culminating in their ungainly feet, dangled like overweighted pendulums from the arm of the chair.
Sprague laughed. He advanced on Stone, executing a hornpipe like a maniac, and laughed still louder when the American gazed up at him without a semblance of a smile. He slapped him on the back like a fool, and laughed again at his discomfiture. The world—even the Gray's Inn Road—was an intensely amusing place that morning. ”

“ It was nine o’clock when Miss Campbell and the girls bade each other a final good night. They had talked the matter of Evelyn Stone to shreds and ribbons, but Miss Campbell was determined not to interfere.
“My dear children, you are young and romantic girls, and I am a hardened old woman, and from my knowledge of the world, I assure you it would be unpardonable for us to thrust ourselves into this strictly family matter. Miss Stone evidently doesn’t want to marry Daniel Moore, or she never would have consented to marry that flint-like person named Ebenezer. ”

“ Miss Stone had had a very unpleasant half-hour with her patroness that morning. It had ended in her going away weeping to pack up her boxes; for Lady Caroline literally refused to condone the injury done to Margaret by any carelessness of chaperonage on Miss Stone's part. "You must be quite unfit for your post, Alicia," she said, severely. ”

“ May be another case of 'out of the frying-pan into the fire'—a toss-up 'twixt 'Cilla and Charybdis, but——"
"Good Lord!" cried Stone, "and what did I say? You don't mean she's going to marry Dwight?"
"She can't help herself. He won't take no for an answer."
"Well—I'll—be—hanged," said Stone, reflectively, "and I ought to be. It's just what my wife said—when the daily readings were going on—would likely be the upshot of the whole business. She said more than that—and she knows women, too—that Priscilla Sanford would make for him the best kind of a wife." ”

“ Miss Stone noticed this and was "riled" a little, for she had tried doubly hard to do well, just because this tow-head was in the class, and now to have the little scamp repudiate it all was too bad.
She called on one and another of the children to point, now to the real girl, now to the picture girl, now to the word girl, and all went very nicely, till finally she asked "Dodd" to take the pointer and see what he could do. But the boy made no motion to obey. Gently she urged him to try, but he hung his head and would not budge. ”

“ Stone interrupted her. “Miss Ames, do you really think you killed your niece’s husband?”
“Oh, sir—I don’t know! I can’t think I did—”
“Of course, you didn’t, Aunt Abby!” Mason Elliott rose from his seat and paced up and down the room. “I must say, Mr. Stone, this is a childish performance! What makes you think any of us would say so, if we had killed Embury? It is utterly absurd!”
“You’re absurd, Elliott,” cut in Hendricks. “Mr. Stone is a psychologist. He learns what he wants to know not from what we say—but the way we say it. Right, Mr. Stone?” ”

“ Stone, stiffly, awkwardly but conscientiously, was doing her institutional best to arm the state’s charge for her first foray into the outside world.
“And so, Sally, I want you to remember to—to keep your body pure and your mind clean,” Mrs. Stone summed up, her strong, heavy face almost as red as Sally’s own. “You’re too young to go out with young men, but you’ll be meeting the hired hands on the farm. You—you mustn’t let them take liberties of any kind with you. ”

“ No true lover would accept the hand without the heart."
"He must never know—for—I—I—shall learn to love him by and by. Mrs. Stone says so; they all say so," she whispered.
"They are driving you into a—a—a wretched future with their silly advice!" cried the young man, violently, despair goading him to desperation. He pushed her from him and rose to his feet.
"I have been deluding myself," he said, bitterly. "I thought you loved me. I was mistaken, I see. I will never humble myself to you again, proud Kathleen. From this moment to my life's end, we are strangers. ”

“ This is not one of Mr Stone's happiest efforts, but it is a nice picture, and we prefer it to his other in the same exhibition, The Gardener's Daughter, a young lady attitudinising under a rose-tree, with a pair of admiring swains in the distance. This artist is too apt to give his male lovers a sickly look, as if their love disagreed with them. The best picture he has shown this year is one in the British Institution—Sympathy—two very pretty maidens, with an expression of pleasing sentiment in their faces. Barring a little occasional mannerism, Mr Stone is a very delightful painter ”

“ She pulled them out of her pocket, every one and made a long row of stone children that filled the whole window sill.
"I guess I'll call them Mr. and Mrs. Stone," she laughed softly to herself, and then I'll name the Stone children. "You're Patricia," she announced to the biggest stone sister, "and you're William Stone and you're Edward and you're Margaret and you're Ellen and you're—you're—dear me! How in the world do people name their families? ”

“ Ah, many's the time, when my poor dear husband was alive, did I pine for a kind word, and get a black look instead! And a woman can turn to no one in a trouble like that. She feels as if her own door had been slammed in her face. What you want is a cheerful outing with a sympathetic friend, but I hear you're little more than a prisoner in your own house."
"Who told yer that?" cried Ada, flushing angrily.
"A little bird told me," said the woman, with a false grin.
"Well, I'd wring its neck, if I 'eard it," cried Ada. "And as fer bein' a prisoner, I'm goin' out this very afternoon." ”

“ For of its blank checks but one had been torn out, and the remaining stub gave the information that it was a check for ten thousand dollars drawn to the order of Anita Austin.
Those who looked at it stared incredulously.
“It is dated,” Stone said, “the date that Doctor Waring died.”
It was. Had this too, been given to the strange young woman, whom Stone was beginning to designate to himself by the title of adventuress? Was it possible that young girl, who seemed scarce more than a child, had some how maneuvered to get all this from a man whom she had deliberately fascinated and infatuated? ”

“ But it gave no hint as to where the hiding-place might be.
Stone pondered long and deeply over the statement that the gems were in some crypt, and, as he thought, a great inspiration came to him.
"Of course!" he said to himself, "it is that! It can be nothing else!"
But he confided his new theory to nobody; he only began to ask more questions.
He quizzed Iris as to her Chicago visit, and [Pg 236] wanted a detailed account of every minute she had spent there. Then he asked her more particularly about the house where she was taken in the little motor car. ”

“ As far as a man can be said to resemble a woman, so did, in looks and character, Timothy Stone his niece, save that his once coal-black hair is now white; his fishy eyes sunken, though keen as a razor; in height, five feet ten; of spare, alert figure, active as a prize racer, knowing as the jockey who rides him.
Elizabeth Stone is an older counter-part of her niece, save that she wears that fashionable mantle of to-day—the cloak of religion, in which, unlike her brother, she is so comfortable as never to allow it to fall from her angular shoulders. ”

“ Six months after the death of Mrs Yabsley, Ada and Mrs Herring sat in the back parlour of the Angel sipping brandy. They had drunk their fill and it was time to be going, but Ada had no desire to move. She tapped her foot gently as she listened to the other woman's ceaseless flow of talk, but her mind was elsewhere. She had reached the stage when the world seemed a delightful place to live in; when it was a pleasure to watch the people moving and gesticulating like figures in a play, without jar or fret, as machines move on well-oiled cogs. ”

“ Do you call Lucy Stone, the woman reformer of the world, with her eloquence, her soft voice, her matchless, unwearied work for all that is good, with her motherly appearance, do you call such a woman unwomanly? ”

“ Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Colonel Higginson, and my dear pastor, James Freeman Clarke. But here was also Lucy Stone, who had long been the object of one of my imaginary dislikes. As I looked into her sweet, womanly face and heard her earnest voice, I felt that the object of my distaste had been a mere phantom, conjured up by silly and senseless misrepresentations. Here stood the true woman, pure, noble, great-hearted, with the light of her good life shining in every feature of her face. Here, too, I saw the husband whose devotion so ably seconded her life-work. ”

“ Awaiting the arrival of Anita Frayne, Stone thought rapidly. Forming his judgments, as always, more by impressions than by words, he found himself believing in Pauline Stuart. She had bought the paper snake, she had lied about it, but many women would have done the same. Knowing that the purchase of the toy meant definite suspicion, wouldn’t any innocent girl have feared and dreaded that exposure? If she had been guilty, she would scarcely have dared deny the facts of buying it, lest it be proved against her, and make matters worse. ”

“ I said, in an effort to speak lightly, for Stone's face had an ominous look, as if he were learning grave truths.
"Walls not only have ears, they have tongues," he returned. "These walls have already told me much of Miss Van Allen's character."
"Oh, how?" cried Winnie, "do tell us how you deduce and all that!" ”

“ Miss Mystery looked from Stone’s impassive face to Fibsy’s eager boyish countenance. Then she looked at Maurice Trask.
The latter showed deepest sympathy and interest but Trask also had a wary air, as if ready to interrupt any disclosures that might be damaging to the girl.
“First of all,” Stone said, “who sent you that telegram from San Francisco?”
“I don’t know.” The calm little face was as expressionless as Stone’s own, and she made her statement as straightforwardly as if it had been true.
“Miss Austin,” Stone spoke severely now, “it’s to your own advantage to adopt a more amenable manner. ”

“ The big chest laboured, was convulsed, and then quiet.
"He's gone!" said Healy, his voice sharp with greed and anger. "Gone—and he never told us where it was. Wasted his time talking about his fool wife and kid."
"Forget that," said Stone, crisply, himself trembling with excitement. "He was trying to tell us in his own way. Keep the women out of it, Healy. Give me that whisky. Lefty."
The Cockney did so, his eyes still glittering as he watched Stone's efforts to get some liquor between the old prospector's teeth, worn and stained, but stubbornly resisting. ”

“ Eyes behind almost opaque lead-glass goggles, head and body encased in a multi-layered suit each ply of which was copiously smeared with thick lead paint, Stone studied the raging monster of the heavens from the closest viewpoint any human being had ever attained – and lived. ”

“ I think nothing that I have heard of Anna Stone's life speaks more clearly of the depth of real self-abnegation,—perfect obliteration of self, in fact—and the secret of her power in winning souls where others failed to win, than this story I am now to tell you. Several years ago, before Anna returned home from America, an old woman about sixty-four years of age, was engaged to do sewing for Dr. Stone from time to time. The woman was a widow with one son, who was an opium fiend in every sense of the word. ”

“ A woman was commending a boy’s face: Give me a man’s, quoth another, a boy’s is not worth a hair.
1112. A gentleman whose name was Stone, falling off his horse, in crossing a river, into deep water, out of which he got not without some danger: his companions laughed at his mischance, and being reproved, answered, That there was no man but would laugh to see a Stone swim.
1113. One being about to write the superscription of a letter to his mistress, asked a scholar what terms were best to give her,—who told him, “the Venus, lass of his affections,” was good ”

“ Ada thrust her fat fingers through the rigid band of metal; it slipped over the joints and hung loosely on her wrist. Then Pinkey clasped the string of shining beads round her thin neck, the metallic lustre of the false gems heightening the delicate pallor of her fine skin. The effect was superb. Ada, feeling that the bride was eclipsed, pretended that her wedding ring was hurting her, and drew all eyes to that badge of honour.
When they reached Cardigan Street, Mrs Yabsley went into the back room, and returned grunting under the weight of a dozen bottles of beer in a basket. ”

“ Play-acting all the time, all dressed up in purple satin trousers and a green satin jacket all glittery with gold braid! I wish I had lots of money, so I could send them all tickets to come to the carnival,” her thoughts ran on, as homesickness for the place she had hoped never to see again rose up, treacherous and unwelcome, to dim her joy in the glorious miracle of David’s love.
“I suppose,” she confessed forlornly, “that Mrs. Stone is the only mother I’ll ever know. I wish I’d always been good, so she wouldn’t believe the awful things Clem Carson said about me. ”

“ Julie Stone looked up from straightening her dress and studied his lined face. "So you really were expecting an attack?" She shook her head in disgust. "I finally meet a man with some semblance of guts, and the only way he can think of to win his point is to let a goon squad spill them in the headlines!" ”

“ Among the manifold interests which now opened up before me, the cause of woman suffrage was for a time predominant. The novelty of the topic in the mind of the general public brought together large audiences in Boston and in the neighboring towns. Lucy Stone's fervent zeal, always guided by her faultless feeling of propriety, the earnest pleading of her husband, the brilliant eloquence and personal magnetism of Mary A. Livermore,—all these things combined to give to our platform a novel and sustained attraction. ”