Favorite Five

   "If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage."
   As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.
   "Are you dying for him?" she whispered.
   "And his wife and child. Hush! Yes."
   "O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"
   "Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last."
                                                                                   A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

  Weary waited what seemed to him a reasonable time, but her lashes drooped lower, if anything. Then he made one of the quick, unlooked for moves which made him a master of horses. Before she quite knew what was occurring, the schoolma'am was upon her feet and snuggled close in Weary's eager arms. More, he had a hand under her chin, her face was tilted back and he was smiling down into her wide, startled eyes.

  "I didn't burn a streak a thousand miles long in the atmosphere, getting back here, to be scared out now by a little woman like you," he remarked, and tucked a stray, brown lock solicitously behind her ear. Then he bent and kissed her deliberately upon the mouth.

                                                                                  The Lonesome Trail by B. M. Bower

  But Bob was on his stomach in the road scuttling the ship that was to have carried away the princess. The chauffeur was fully occupied in the house, for he had been ordered to follow and be ready to assist in carrying away an insane person, and he had no thought for his car at present. It was an ugly job, and one that he didn't like, but he was getting big pay, and such things had to be done.  

                                                                                   Exit Betty by Grace Livingston Hill

"No,"—he calmly replied,—"there is but one married woman in the world whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one is—"
"—Mrs. Weston, I suppose," interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified.
"No—Mrs. Knightley;—and till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself."
                                                                                   Emma by Jane Austen


  "And you think if I turn to religion, my despondency will vanish" --- he snapped a finger --- "like that?"

  "It's God I'm referring to, Mr. Clay ... not religion.  And I would no more tell you that than a blind man his sight will be restored.  God's ways are not our ways, Mr. Clay.  Sometime He heals, but sometimes He doesn't."
                                                                                   The Widow of Larkspur Inn by Lawana Blackwell