A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT
AND OTHER STORIES
[Illustration]
BY ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
A Christmas Accident
STORIES BY
ANNIE ELIOT TRUMBULL
[Illustration: Leaf]
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT AND OTHER STORIES. 16mo. Cloth $1.00
ROD'S SALVATION AND OTHER STORIES. 16mo. Cloth 1.00
A CAPE COD WEEK. 16mo. Cloth 1.00
MISTRESS CONTENT CRADOCK. Cloth. 16mo. 1.00
[Illustration: Leaf]
A. S. BARNES & CO., PUBLISHERS, _New York_.
A Christmas Accident
_And Other Stories_
By
Annie Eliot Trumbull
Author of "White Birches," "A Masque of Culture," etc.
[Illustration: Emblem]
New York A. S. Barnes and Company 1900
_Copyright, 1897_, BY A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY.
=University Press:= JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
OF the stories included in this volume, the first originally appeared in the _Hartford Courant_; "After--the Deluge," in the _Atlantic Monthly_; "Mary A. Twining," in the _Home Maker_; "A Postlude" and "Her Neighbor's Landmark," in the _Outlook_; "The 'Daily Morning Chronicle,'" in _The New England Magazine_; and "Hearts Unfortified," in _McClure's Magazine_. To the courtesy of the editors of these periodicals I am indebted for permission to reprint them.
A. E. T.
Contents
Page
A CHRISTMAS ACCIDENT 1
AFTER--THE DELUGE 32
MEMOIR OF MARY TWINING 67
A POSTLUDE 99
THE "DAILY MORNING CHRONICLE" 139
HEARTS UNFORTIFIED 177
HER NEIGHBOR'S LANDMARK 210
A Christmas Accident
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AT first the two yards were as much alike as the two houses, each house being the exact copy of the other. They were just two of those little red brick dwellings that one is always seeing side by side in the outskirts of a city, and looking as if the occupants must be alike too. But these two families were quite different. Mr. Gilton, who lived in one, was a pretty cross sort of man, and was quite well-to-do, as cross people sometimes are. He and his wife lived alone, and they did not have much going out and coming in, either. Mrs. Gilton would have liked more of it, but she had given up thinking about it, for her husband had said so many times that it was women's tomfoolery to want to have people, whom you weren't anything to and who weren't anything to you, ringing your doorbell all the time and bothering around in your dining-room,--which of course it was; and she would have believed it if a woman ever did believe anything a man says a great many times.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: A Christmas Accident and Other Stories by Trumbull
- 2: Gilton said he could go to law about it
- 3: Everybody except the Giltons themselves
- 4: Bilton had decided that it should be the Christmas dinner
- 5: Gilton stepped into his horse car
- 6: Gilton looked at Cora Cordelia
- 7: Gilton was too perplexed to notice this
- 8: Gilton her gifts for the family
- 9: Gilton will never forget that moment
- 10: You can't stay in harbor allers
- 11: Sat Mellony Pember and Ira Baldwin
- 12: I'm obligated to Cap'n Phippeny
- 13: Mis' Pember is likely enough lookin' woman herself
- 14: Mellony turned her eyes from emptiness
- 15: Pember had married the captain early in life
- 16: So Mellony had not gone out in that
- 17: You see Mellony Mellony's married
- 18: I never heard as you weren't a good husband to Mis' Phippeny
- 19: That I claim for Mary Twining stately Lineage
- 20: A Sampler which was not considered discreditable
- 21: That he should hold Mistress Twining excused
- 22: Declares this most staid biographer
- 23: With her untidy hair and lifted eyes
- 24: Prudent Mistress Mary and delinquent Mr
- 25: Of such kind is my Cousin Eustace Fleming
- 26: Twining became the wife of her Cousin Eustace Fleming
- 27: Did you notice how polite the baggageman was
- 28: I think he was a wonderfully nice baggageman
- 29: So that Tom Endover would kiss her
- 30: Suddenly Lucy Eastman turned to her companion
- 31: His father died before we ever went to Englefield
- 32: Through which the gray haired women wandered
- 33: Mary Leonard led the way to the grocer's
- 34: Shall we stop and see Miss Pinsett
- 35: All of which Miss Pinsett could tell them
- 36: Endover was not heeding the introduction
- 37: Because Tom Endover may call to night
- 38: Its readers represented to Lucyet the great harsh
- 39: Was the mail going to be late this morning
- 40: Lucyet found their indifference phenomenal
- 41: And it was thither that Lucyet now went for her noonday meal
- 42: Lucyet watched her breathlessly
- 43: Lucyet went quietly behind her little window
- 44: And regarded Lucyet stolidly as she approached
- 45: Not that one outside of which Lucyet was sitting
- 46: Lucyet had moved forward a step or two
- 47: Lucyet took the letter mechanically
- 48: And the university cheer echoed
- 49: You have always underrated them
- 50: And I'm obliged to be careful what I spend
- 51: Urged Miss Normaine with pathos
- 52: You're the same Katharine Normaine
- 53: Judge Donald departed on a tour of investigation
- 54: Herbert to come out to the platform
- 55: Miss Normaine found her niece at her side
- 56: To gaze with me upon demolished theories
- 57: And after less sturdy labor somehow
- 58: Reuben had opened his mouth to speak
- 59: They're kinder sensible about that
- 60: I wouldn't say the Granger twins was bad tempered
- 61: Monroe watched her proceedings with tolerant kindliness
- 62: Stephen and Reuben marched to the rescue
- 63: Nice place for the molasses jug
- 64: The volume entitled Rod's Salvation
- 65: CRADDOCK changed to CRADOCK CRADOCK