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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

[Illustration: Leaf]


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.

In the other house there were five children, and, as Mr. Gilton said,
they made too large a family, and they ought to have gone somewhere
else. Possibly they would have gone