Mattie:—A Stray (Vol 1 of 3)

Mattie guessed the plan by which the robbery had been effected, and at which Mrs. Watts had connived. Her attention had been distracted by the story that had been fabricated for...

Master Sidney Hinchford in old times had been a playfellow of Harriet Wesden--lodging in the same house together, returning from school at the same hours, they had become almost...

Three years make but little difference in the general aspect of a poor neighbourhood. The same shops doing their scanty business; the same loiterers at street corners; the same...

After awhile, for an hour passed before a word was exchanged, and Sidney Hinchford still held the newspaper before him, staring at it, without comprehending a word. A singular p...

Miss Wesden continued to rock herself to and fro and moan at frequent intervals, after Mattie had intruded so unceremoniously upon her sorrows. She had reached the hysterical st...

"Oh! Harriet, I am very sorry," burst forth Sidney, when the noise had died away, and Harriet Wesden, pale and silent, walked on by his side with her trembling hand upon his arm.

Mr. Wesden retired from business. After thirty or forty years' application to the arduous task of "keeping house and home together," after much hesitation as to whether it were...

Mrs. Sarah Jane Watts, better known to society and society's guardians by the cognomen of Mother Watts, kept a lodging-house in Kent Street. They who know where Kent Street, Bor...

The middle of March; six weeks since the robbery of Master Hinchfords' gold heart; a wet night in lieu of a foggy one; a cold wind sweeping down the street and dashing the rain...

Harriet Wesden hurried away after her promise; Mattie, at the last moment, recalling to her notice the fact of the robbery, and reminding her of the way in which she ought to br...

Yes, the house in Great Suffolk Street had been again visited by "the dangerous classes." It was a house well watched, or a house that was doomed to be unfortunate in its latter...

Yes, Mr. Wesden, late of Suffolk Street, had become nervous and eccentric in his old age--many people do, besides stationers. He had retired from business too late to enjoy the...

Hard times set in after that night. The winter was half over, Mattie had said; but the worst half was yet to come, and for that she, with many thousands like her, had made but l...

The nights "drew in" more and more; and nearer and nearer with the shortest day approached the end of Sidney Hinchford's probation. Only a week or two between the final explanat...

Harriet Wesden had spoken more than once to Mattie of the Eveleighs, a family which plays no part in these pages, although, from Harriet's knowledge of it, every after page of t...

I am afraid that the reader will be very much disgusted with us as story-tellers, when we inform him that all these details are but preliminary to our story proper--a kind of pr...

Mr. Wesden, if not the first person up in the house, was at least the first person who superintended business in the morning. For years that little shop had been opened punctual...

"You told a lie about it, Sidney, and though you saved the girl from prison, yet it was a big, black lie all the same; and if luck follows it, why it's clean against the Bible."

It was not an evening party of the first water, or given by people of first-rate position in society, or held in a quarter whither the fashionable classes most do congregate. It...

In our last chapter we have implied that life began early for Harriet Wesden. Before her school-days were finished, and with that precocity for which school-girls of the present...

Mattie in her self-conceit imagined that she had frightened the prowler from Great Suffolk Street; in lieu thereof, she had only deterred him from entering a second appearance o...

When Mr. Hinchford returned home, Sidney related the particulars of the strange visit that he had received; and from the effect which the news produced on his father, was gratef...

figure of the girl on the chair before him, the rapid manner in which she expounded her theory, her animation, sudden gestures, and, above all, his own intense interest in the t...