Category: Novels
UP to the age of fourteen I think I spent as happy a life as any child in any cottage home in England. There is many a cottage which is no "home" at all, in the true sense of the word, notwithstanding those pretty words of poetry about—
UP to the age of fourteen I think I spent as happy a life as any child in any cottage home in England. There is many a cottage which is no "home" at all, in the true sense of th...
2. CHAPTER II.I REMEMBER so well one particular Sunday evening. It is not surprising that I should remember that Sunday evening, for it came just before a great event in our lives.
3. CHAPTER III.Father had come back, and we all felt very much excited still, as was only natural, I suppose. Grannie looked sad, I thought, but she was the only one to seem so. I had had a re...
4. CHAPTER IV.THE next few days were very stirring. People were always coming in and out, to talk over our "piece of good fortune." Neighbours kept dropping in to congratulate us, and to ask...
5. CHAPTER V.DAYS went by, and still the money did not come. Father grew chafed and restless waiting for it, and mother was in a state of constant ups and downs. Every morning we were keepin...
6. CHAPTER VI.A FEW days later, father suddenly found that all was not quite so sure as he had thought about the five thousand pounds. For the son, who had expected the money, made up his min...
7. CHAPTER VII.THOUGH father had said he did not mean to stop getting things from Trowgood's, because he was so sure the money would come to us, still he thought better of this. I am not at al...
8. CHAPTER VIII.IT was only two or three days after that Sunday afternoon, that we heard of the money being sure to us. The matter had been gone into, and James Morison had done his very best t...
9. CHAPTER IX.TROWGOOD was willing to trust to any amount for the furniture; so the making ready of the new house began at once. Mother said she did not see any good in waiting, for the bills...
10. CHAPTER X.ABOUT ten days after this, father said to us one morning that we were to have a nice dinner ready, for he was going to bring home a friend with him. He would not tell us who it...
11. CHAPTER XI.THE evening came which was to have been our last in the old home, for the very next day we were to have left it—just one week before Christmas Day.
12. CHAPTER XII.THE day before the New Year grannie's body was laid to rest in the green churchyard. But grannie herself was not there. I used to think of how she was singing, away in her heave...
13. CHAPTER XIII.ONE gets used, more or less, to almost any sort of state; and by the time we had been seven or eight months in the house, I remember how things looked quite natural, and the old...
14. CHAPTER XIV.CHRISTMAS bills came dropping in thick and fast that year. I had not looked for so many; neither, I am sure, had father and mother. It is so easy to order in a lot of things, ea...
15. CHAPTER XV.So father borrowed from Mr. Simmons, and paid off the bills owing, and everything seemed straight again—only of course there was the interest to be paid to Mr. Simmons, making o...
16. CHAPTER XVI.Somebody brought him to the door, and pushed him in and went away. I was almost sure it was Mr. Simmons, but I could not quite see in the dark, and he did not answer when I spoke.
17. CHAPTER XVII.ONE evening, about ten days before Christmas, mother and I were waiting, as we so often did, for father's return. It was earlier than he commonly came back, so we did not expect...