Ladies-In-Waiting

Published in 1919, this collection gathers one novella and four shorter tales, all of them turning on courtship, hesitation, and love that has to wait for its moment. The longest piece, “Miss Thomasina Tucker,” follows an American singer who crosses to Europe chasing an independent career and finds those plans complicated by affection. The companion stories, “The Turning-Point,” “Huldah the Prophetess,” “Two on a Tour,” and “Philippa’s Nervous Prostration,” each trace a small romantic entanglement toward its resolution. Wiggin writes with the light comic touch and warm sympathy that carried her earlier novels, and readers who came to her through Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm will recognize the same gift for drawing character. It is a gentle, good-humored volume from one of America’s most widely read storytellers.