Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MISS MARIA Miss Maria Welwood's house was on Locust Street—the street that climbs the hill, and melts into a country road, and then joins the turnpike over which the stage used to come every day from Mercer. It was such a house as one sees so often in Pennsylvania and Maryland — stone and brick— mostly stone, so that the bricks seemed to be built in in patches, to help out. It stood back from the street, behind a low brick wall that was crumbling here and there where the plaster had fallen out; but the vines heaped on the coping and trailing down almost to the flag-stones of the foot-path outside hid the marks of years and weather, so it never seemed worth while to repair it. In the spring these flag-stones were white with falling blossoms of the plum-trees just inside, and petals from the Pirus japonica drifted over and lay among them like little crimson shells; later in the season Persian lilacs waved their delicate purple plumes over the head of the passer-by, who could see, for the wall was low, a pleasant old garden at one side of the house. To be sure, it held nothing more choice than old- fashioned perennials, that showed their friendly faces year after year — peonies, and yellow iris, and the powdery pink of queen-of-the-meadow — and between them what annuals might sow themselves, with here and there a low bush of old-man, or musk, or clove-pink. The house itself was low and rambling, and much bigger than Miss Welwood needed —her family being herself and a cousin, Rose Knight. A nephew, Charles Welwood, lived with her until he was twenty-four, and, for that matter, considering the number of his visits, continued to live with her, now that he was thirty. But the nominal household was herself and Rose ; a " good girl," Old Chester called Rose, sensible, and modest, as a g...