The Story of Prince Fairyfoot / Frances Hodgson Burnett

PREFATORY NOTE

"THE STORY OF PRINCE FAIRYFOOT" was originally intended to be the first

of a series, under the general title of "Stories from the Lost

Fairy-Book, Re-told by the Child Who Read Them," concerning which Mrs.

Burnett relates:

"When I was a child of six or seven, I had given to me a book of

fairy-stories, of which I was very fond. Before it had been in my

possession many months, it disappeared, and, though since then I have

tried repeatedly, both in England and America, to find a copy of it, I

have never been able to do so.

The Proud Little Grain of Wheat / Frances Hodgson Burnett

There once was a little grain of wheat which was very proud indeed. The

first thing it remembered was being very much crowded and jostled by a

great many other grains of wheat, all living in the same sack in the

granary. It was quite dark in the sack, and no one could move about, and

so there was nothing to be done but to sit still and talk and think. The

proud little grain of wheat talked a great deal, but did not think quite

so much, while its next neighbour thought a great deal and only talked

when it was asked questions it could answer. It used to say that when it

thought a great deal it could remember things which it seemed to have

heard a long time ago.

The Pretty Sister Of José / Frances Hodgson Burnett

CHAPTER I.

It had taken him a long time, and it had cost him--José--much hard labor, to prepare for his aged grandmother and Pepita the tiny home outside Madrid, to which he at last brought them in great triumph one hot summer's day, when the very vine-leaves and orange-trees themselves were dusty. It had been a great undertaking for him in the first place, for he was a slow fellow--José; slow as he was dull and kind and faithful to Pepita and the grandmother. He had a body as big as an ox, and a heart as big as his body, but he was slow and dull in everything but one thing--that was his carpenter work. He was well enough at that, and more than well enough, for he had always had a fancy and a knack for it from the time when as a boy he had worked in his uncle's vineyards and tilled his fields and fed his beasts.

The Little Hunchback Zia / Frances Hodgson Burnett

And it came to pass nigh upon

nineteen hundred and sixteen years ago

The little hunchback Zia toiled slowly up the steep road, keeping in the

deepest shadows, even though the night had long fallen. Sometimes he

staggered with weariness or struck his foot against a stone and

smothered his involuntary cry of pain. He was so full of terror that he

was afraid to utter a sound which might cause any traveler to glance

toward him. This he feared more than any other thing--that some man or

woman might look at him too closely. If such a one knew much and had

keen eyes, he or she might in some way guess even at what they might not

yet see.

The Land of the Blue Flower / Frances Hodgson Burnett

Part One

The Land of the Blue Flower was not called by that name until the tall,

strong, beautiful King Amor came down from his castle on the mountain

crag and began to reign. Before that time it was called King Mordreth's

Land, and as the first King Mordreth had been a fierce and cruel king

this seemed a gloomy name.

Surly Tim / Frances Hodgson Burnett

A Lancashire Story.

"Sorry to hear my fellow-workmen speak so disparagin' o' me? Well, Mester, that's as it may be yo' know. Happen my fellow-workmen ha' made a bit o' a mistake--happen what seems loike crustiness to them beant so much crustiness as summat else--happen I mought do my bit o' complainin' too. Yo' munnot trust aw yo' hear, Mester; that's aw I can say."

Seth / Frances Hodgson Burnett

He came in one evening at sun set with the empty coal-train--his dull young face pale and heavy-eyed with weariness, his corduroy suit dusty and travel-stained, his worldly possessions tied up in the smallest of handkerchief bundles and slung upon the stick resting on his shoulder--and naturally his first appearance attracted some attention among the loungers about the shed dignified by the title of "dépôt." I say "naturally," because arrivals upon the trains to Black Creek were so scarce as to be regarded as curiosities; which again might be said to be natural. The line to the mines had been in existence two months, since the English company had taken them in hand and pushed the matter through with an energy startling to, and not exactly approved by, the majority of good East Tennesseeans. After the first week or so of arrivals--principally Welsh and English miners, with an occasional Irishman--the trains had returned daily to the Creek without a passenger; and accordingly this one created some trifling sensation.

Sara Crewe ( WHAT HAPPENED AT MISS MINCHIN'S ) / Frances Hodgson Burnett

In the first place, Miss Minchin lived in London. Her home was a large,

dull, tall one, in a large, dull square, where all the houses were

alike, and all the sparrows were alike, and where all the door-knockers

made the same heavy sound, and on still days--and nearly all the days

were still--seemed to resound through the entire row in which the knock

was knocked. On Miss Minchin's door there was a brass plate. On the

brass plate there was inscribed in black letters,

Racketty-Packetty House / Frances Hodgson Burnett

As Told by Queen Crosspatch

Now this is the story about the doll family I liked and the doll family I didn't. When you read it you are to remember something I am going to tell you. This is it: If you think dolls never do anything you don't see them do, you are very much mistaken. When people are not looking at them they can do anything they choose. They can dance and sing and play on the piano and have all sorts of fun. But they can only move about and talk when people turn their backs and are not looking. If any one looks, they just stop. Fairies know this and of course Fairies visit in all the dolls' houses where the dolls are agreeable. They will not associate, though, with dolls who are not nice. They never call or leave their cards at a dolls' house where the dolls are proud or bad tempered. They are very particular. If you are conceited or ill-tempered yourself, you will never know a fairy as long as you live.

One Day At Arle / Frances Hodgson Burnett

One day at Arle--a tiny scattered fishing hamlet on the northwestern English coast--there stood at the door of one of the cottages near the shore a woman leaning against the lintel-post and looking out: a woman who would have been apt to attract a stranger's eye, too--a woman young and handsome. This was what a first glance would have taken in; a second would have been apt to teach more and leave a less pleasant impression. She was young enough to have been girlish, but she was not girlish in the least. Her tall, lithe, well-knit figure was braced against the door-post with a tense sort of strength; her handsome face was just at this time as dark and hard in expression as if she had been a woman with years of bitter life behind her; her handsome brows were knit, her lips were set; from head to foot she looked unyielding and stern of purpose.

My Robin / Frances Hodgson Burnett

There came to me among the letters I received last spring one which

touched me very closely. It was a letter full of delightful things but

the delightful thing which so reached my soul was a question. The writer

had been reading "The Secret Garden" and her question was this: "Did you

own the original of the robin? He could not have been a mere creature of

fantasy. I feel sure you owned him." I was thrilled to the centre of my

being. Here was some one who plainly had been intimate with robins--

English robins. I wrote and explained as far as one could in a letter

what I am now going to relate in detail.

Mère Girauds Little Daughter / Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Prut!" said Annot, her sabots clattering loudly on the brick floor as she moved more rapidly in her wrath. "Prut! Madame Giraud, indeed! There was a time, and it was but two years ago, that she was but plain Mere Giraud, and no better than the rest of us; and it seems to me, neighbors, that it is not well to show pride because one has the luck to be favored by fortune. Where, forsooth, would our 'Madame' Giraud stand if luck had not given her a daughter pretty enough to win a rich husband?"

"True, indeed!" echoed two of the gossips who were her admiring listeners. "True, beyond doubt. Where, indeed?"

Lodusky / Frances Hodgson Burnett

They were rather an incongruous element amid the festivities, but they bore themselves very well, notwithstanding, and seemed to be sufficiently interested. The elder of the two--a tall, slender, middle-aged woman, with a somewhat severe, though delicate face--sat quietly apart, looking on at the rough dances and games with a keen relish of their primitive uncouthness; but the younger, a slight, alert creature, moved here and there, her large, changeable eyes looking larger through their glow of excitement.

Little Saint Elizabeth / Frances Hodgson Burnett

She had not been brought up in America at all. She had been born in

France, in a beautiful _château_, and she had been born heiress to a

great fortune, but, nevertheless, just now she felt as if she was very

poor, indeed. And yet her home was in one of the most splendid houses in

New York. She had a lovely suite of apartments of her own, though she was

only eleven years old. She had had her own carriage and a saddle horse, a

train of masters, and governesses, and servants, and was regarded by all

the children of the neighborhood as a sort of grand and mysterious little

princess, whose incomings and outgoings were to be watched with the

greatest interest.

Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame / Frances Hodgson Burnett

It was Madame who first entered the box, and Madame was bright with youthful bloom, bright with jewels, and, moreover, a beauty. She was a little creature, with childishly large eyes, a low, white forehead, reddish-brown hair, and Greek nose and mouth.

"Clearly," remarked the old lady in the box opposite, "not a Frenchwoman. Her youth is too girlish, and she has too petulant an air of indifference."

This old lady in the box opposite was that venerable and somewhat severe aristocrat, Madame de Castro, and having gazed for a moment or so a little disapprovingly at the new arrival, she turned her glasses to the young beauty's companion and uttered an exclamation.

In the Closed Room / Frances Hodgson Burnett

PART ONE

In the fierce airless heat of the small square room the child

Judith panted as she lay on her bed. Her father and mother slept

near her, drowned in the heavy slumber of workers after their

day's labour. Some people in the next flat were quarrelling,

irritated probably by the appalling heat and their miserable

helplessness against it. All the hot emanations of the sun-baked

city streets seemed to combine with their clamour and unrest, and

rise to the flat in which the child lay gazing at the darkness.

It was situated but a few feet from the track of the Elevated

Railroad and existence seemed to pulsate to the rush and roar of

the demon which swept past the windows every few minutes. No one

knew that Judith held the thing in horror, but it was a truth

that she did. She was only seven years old, and at that age it is

not easy to explain one's self so that older people can

understand.

Esmeralda / Frances Hodgson Burnett

To begin, I am a Frenchman, a teacher of languages, and a poor man,--necessarily a poor man, as the great world would say, or I should not be a teacher of languages, and my wife a copyist of great pictures, selling her copies at small prices. In our own eyes, it is true, we are not so poor--my Clélie and I. Looking back upon our past we congratulate ourselves upon our prosperous condition. There was a time when we were poorer than we are now, and were not together, and were, moreover, in London instead of in Paris. These were indeed calamities: to be poor, to teach, to live apart, not even knowing each other--and in England! In England we spent years; we instructed imbeciles of all grades; we were chilled by east winds, and tortured by influenza; we vainly strove to conciliate the appalling English; we were discouraged and desolate.

Behind the White Brick / Frances Hodgson Burnett

It began with Aunt Hetty's being out of temper, which, it must be

confessed, was nothing new. At its best, Aunt Hetty's temper was none of

the most charming, and this morning it was at its worst. She had awakened

to the consciousness of having a hard day's work before her, and she had

awakened late, and so everything had gone wrong from the first. There was

a sharp ring in her voice when she came to Jem's bedroom door and called

out, "Jemima, get up this minute!"