The Pleasant Street Partnership

Pleasant Street Partnership, by Mary F. Leonard

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Title: The Pleasant Street Partnership A Neighborhood Story
Author: Mary F. Leonard
Illustrator: Frank T. Merrill
Release Date: June 26, 2007 [EBook #21944]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Pleasant Street Partnership

BOOKS BY MARY F. LEONARD.
* * * * *
=THE SPECTACLE MAN.= A STORY OF THE MISSING BRIDGE. 266 pages. Cloth. $1.00.
=MR. PAT'S LITTLE GIRL.= A STORY OF THE ARDEN FORESTERS. 322 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
=THE PLEASANT STREET PARTNERSHIP.= A NEIGHBORHOOD STORY. 269 pages. Cloth.
[Illustration: A SMALL BOY . . . STOOD SURVEYING THEM WITH GREAT COMPOSURE]

The Pleasant Street Partnership
A Neighborhood Story
* * * * *
By Mary F. Leonard
Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill
[Illustration]
W. A. WILDE COMPANY BOSTON CHICAGO

Copyright, July, 1903. BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY. All rights reserved.
* * * * *
THE PLEASANT STREET PARTNERSHIP.

=To Charlotte=

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A WAVE OF IMPROVEMENT 11
II. WHAT SHALL WE CALL IT? 21
III. AN ALIEN 24
IV. MISS WILBUR 35
V. THE SHOP 42
VI. IN THE EYES OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD 50
VII. A SPOOL OF TWIST 60
VIII. A MATTER OF LOYALTY 72
IX. IN THE SHOP 82
X. ALEXINA 90
XI. THE LAST STRAW 98
XII. THE DISCOVERY 107
XIII. AFTERWARD 115
XIV. MRS. MILLARD DEPARTS 121
XV. GIANT DESPAIR 129
XVI. CHARLOTTE 138
XVII. AN EVENING CALL 146
XVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF A BIRTHDAY CAKE 156
XIX. TEA AND TALK 166
XX. MERRY HEARTS 175
XXI. THE RICH MISS CARPENTER 185
XXII. VALENTINES 192
XXIII. NEIGHBORS 203
XXIV. WAYLAND 215
XXV. THE PRICE OF A BOND 222
XXVI. NORAH'S ARK 229
XXVII. AN ANNIVERSARY 236
XXVIII. WHAT IT MEANT 248
XXIX. A LETTER 253
XXX. CHANGES 262

ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE "A small boy . . . stood surveying them with great composure" Frontispiece 17
"Securely entrenched behind the lace curtain, she levelled her glass" 61
"She sank into a chair" 109
"James Mandeville's taste was exacting" 194

The Pleasant Street Partnership
=A Neighborhood Story=
CHAPTER FIRST
A WAVE OF IMPROVEMENT
Pleasant Street was regarded by the Terrace as merely an avenue of approach to its own exclusive precincts. That Pleasant Street came to an end at the Terrace seemed to imply that nothing was to be gained by going farther; and if you desired a quiet, substantial neighborhood,--none of your showy modern houses on meagre lots, but spacious dwellings, standing well apart from each other on high ground,--you found it here.
It could not be denied that the Terrace was rather far down town. Around it the busy city was closing in, with its blocks of commonplace houses, its schools and sanitariums, its noisy car lines, until it seemed but a question of a few years when it would be engulfed in a wave of mediocrity. Fashion had long ago turned her face in another direction, and yet in a way the Terrace held its own. It could boast of some wealth, and more distinguished grandfathers were to be heard of within its small area than in the length and breadth of Dean Avenue.
Its residents felt for each other that friendliness born of long association. Some of the best people of the town had built their homes here between thirty and forty years ago, and a comparison of directories would have shown a surprising proportion of the old names still represented.
Perhaps no one thing contributes more to a sense of dignity than long residence in one house, and it was natural enough that the Terrace should shrug its shoulders at the row of toy dwellings that sprang up almost magically on Pleasant Street. That this thoroughfare, so long given over to side yards and vacant lots, was showing a disposition to improve, was a matter of no concern to the Terrace until unexpectedly its own territory was invaded.
On the northeast corner of the Terrace and Pleasant Street there had long stood a cottage. In the midst of a large lot, with fine shade-trees around it and a beautifully kept lawn, it had never seemed out of place among its more pretentious neighbors; but now upon the death of its owner the property was divided into three lots and offered for sale. What this might mean was at first hardly realized, until one day men were discovered to be at work on the corner, digging a foundation.
Upon inquiry it developed that a drug store was to be built. The neighborhood did not like this, but felt on the whole it might have been worse,--this conclusion, as Wayland Leigh pointed out later on, being founded on the mistaken hypothesis that all drug stores