GRIM TALES. BY E. NESBIT. London: A. D. INNES & CO., 31 & 32, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1893. My thanks are due to the Editors of _Longman's Magazine_, _Temple Bar_, the _Argosy_, _Home Chimes_, and the _Illustrated London News_, in which periodicals these stories first appeared. E. NESBIT. [Handwritten note from author: 10/4/97. Will you just send me a card to say if you have any of these, & if so which? In great haste E. Nesbit P.T.O. Songs of the Maid Skrine The Rosetree of Hildesheim Weston Songs without answer Putnam Songs of love & death Armour A Trip to Fairyland Morgan Arrows of Song The Pilgrim Jewitt Flamma Vestalis Mason Scintilloe Carminis Almy] CONTENTS. PAGE THE EBONY FRAME 9 JOHN CHARRINGTON'S WEDDING 37 UNCLE ABRAHAM'S ROMANCE 57 THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMI-DETACHED 67 FROM THE DEAD 77 MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE 111 THE MASS FOR THE DEAD 145 GRIM TALES. _THE EBONY FRAME._ To be rich is a luxurious sensation--the more so when you have plumbed the depths of hard-up-ness as a Fleet Street hack, a picker-up of unconsidered pars, a reporter, an unappreciated journalist--all callings utterly inconsistent with one's family feeling and one's direct descent from the Dukes of Picardy. When my Aunt Dorcas died and left me seven hundred a year and a furnished house in Chelsea, I felt that life had nothing left to offer except immediate possession of the legacy. Even Mildred Mayhew, whom I had hitherto regarded as my life's light, became less luminous. I was not engaged to Mildred, but I lodged with her mother, and I sang duets with Mildred, and gave her gloves when it would run to it, which was seldom. She was a dear good girl, and I meant to marry her some day. It is very nice to feel that a good little woman is thinking of you--it helps you in your work--and it is pleasant to know she will say "Yes" when you say "Will you?" But, as I say, my legacy almost put Mildred out of my head, especially as she was staying with friends in the country just then. Before the first gloss was off my new mourning I was seated in my aunt's own armchair in front of the fire in the dining-room of my own house. My own house! It was grand, but rather lonely. I _did_ think of Mildred just then.