Old Friends and New

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Houghton, Osgood, 1879 - 269 pages

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Page 116 - GROW old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in his hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!
Page 10 - I think it was because she was her best and most lady-like self. It was not long before she knew the village people almost as well as Miss Dane did, and she became a very great favorite, as a girl so easily can who is good-natured and pretty, and well versed in city fashions; who has that tact and cleverness that come to such a nature from going about the world and knowing many people. She had not been in Longfield many weeks before she heard something of Miss Dane's...
Page 29 - ... before dinner to that and to some other repairs. So after breakfast was over she brought the dress downstairs, with her work-box, and settled herself in the dining-room. Miss Dane usually sat there in the morning; it was a pleasant room, and she could keep an unsuspected watch over the kitchen and Melissa, who did not need watching in the least. I dare say it was for the sake of being within the sound of a voice. Miss Dane marched in and out that morning: she went up-stairs and came down again,...
Page 15 - ... extra work, and she calculated to have one piece of work join on to another. However, it was no account, and she was obliged for the company ; and Nelly laughed merrily as she stood washing her hands in the shining old copper basin at the sink. The sun would not be round that side of the house for a long time yet, and the pink and blue morning-glories were still in their full bloom and freshness. They grew over the window, twined on strings exactly the same distance apart. There was a box crowded...
Page 35 - I've spent as much as a couple o' fortunes, and here I am. Devil take it!" Nelly was still sewing in the dining-room, but soon after Miss Dane had gone out to the kitchen one of the doors between had slowly closed itself with a plaintive whine. The round stone that Melissa used to keep it open had been pushed away. Nelly was a little annoyed; she liked to hear what was going on, but she was just then holding her work with great care in a place that was hard to sew, so she did not move. She heard...
Page 15 - I ain't going to give up a certainty for an uncertainty, — that's what / always tell "em," added Melissa, with great decision, as if she were besieged by lovers; but Nelly smiled inwardly as she thought of the courage it would take to support any one who wished to offer her companion his heart and hand. It would need desperate energy to scale the walls of that garrison. The green peas were all shelled presently, and Melissa said, gravely, that she should have to be lazy now until it was time to...
Page 18 - She could not see the likeness herself, but the pictures suggested something else, and she turned suddenly and went hurrying up the stairs to Miss Horatia's own room, where she remembered to have seen a group of silhouettes fastened to the wall. There were seven or eight, and she looked at the young men among them most carefully, but they were all marked with the name of Dane: they were Miss Horatia's brothers, and our friend hung them on their little brass hooks again with a feeling of disappointment....
Page 28 - If she had only known that she never should have seen him again, poor fellow! But, as usual, her thoughts changed their current a little at the end of her reverie. Perhaps, after all, loneliness was not so hard to bear as other sorrows; she had had a pleasant life; God had been very good to her, and had spared her many trials and granted her many blessings. She would try and serve him better. "I am an old woman now," she said to herself. "Things are better as they are; God knows best, and I never...
Page 11 - ... tact and cleverness that come to such a nature from going about the world and knowing many people. She had not been in Longfield many weeks before she heard something of Miss Dane's lovestory ; for one of her new friends said, in a confidential moment, " Does your cousin ever speak to you about the young man to whom she was engaged to be married? " And Nelly answered, " No," with great wonder, and not without regret at her own ignorance.
Page 16 - Longfield it seemed to her that everything had its story, and she liked the quietness and unchangeableness with which life seemed to go on from year to year. She had seen many a dainty or gorgeous garden, but never one that she had liked so well as this, with its herb-bed and its broken rows of currant-bushes, its tall stalks of white lilies, and its wandering rosebushes and honeysuckles, that had bloomed beside the straight paths for so many more summers than she herself had lived. She picked a...

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