E-text prepared by ellinora and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/grayangels00bartiala THE GRAY ANGELS by NALBRO BARTLEY Author of “A Woman’s Woman,” “Paradise Auction,” etc. [Illustration] Boston Small, Maynard & Company Publishers Copyright, 1920, by Small, Maynard & Company (Incorporated) THE GRAY ANGELS CHAPTER I The younger generation of Birge’s Corners insisted that nothing exciting had happened since Abigail Clergy’s love affair in 1867, and the older generation retorted that Thurley Precore, who must have been born in Arcadia, was bound to create excitement. The older generation were content to have time snail over their doorsteps. To their placid minds much had happened and was happening to content any one of normal makeup. Take the Hotel Button—what more did any one want than that two-story establishment with ramshackle outbuildings and a crazy wooden fence about the whole of it? Commercial travellers making the town annually never complained about Prince Hawkins’ hospitality or Mrs. Prince Hawkins’ cooking—never. And during one of those comical cold spells, when twenty below zero was registered on the thermometer, the younger generation were mighty glad to end a sleigh ride before the Hotel Button, and have one of Mrs. Prince Hawkins’ oyster suppers—she had been Lena Button, an only child, and her working like a slave now ...! Also, the upstairs parlor with its flowered carpet and tortured walnut furniture and the same square piano on which Lena Button had learned her “Battle of Prague”—the younger generation never thought of refusing the upstairs parlor in which to have a wind-up dance. None of them complained about the slowness of Birge’s Corners—until the next day!