Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read this ebook for free! No credit card needed, absolutely nothing to pay.
Words: 54605 in 17 pages
This is an ebook sharing website. You can read the uploaded ebooks for free here. No credit cards needed, nothing to pay. If you want to own a digital copy of the ebook, or want to read offline with your favorite ebook-reader, then you can choose to buy and download the ebook.
FIRST LOVE.
A NOVEL IN THREE VOLUMES.
LONDON: SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.
LONDON: IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY-STREET, STRAND.
All the mottoes annexed to the chapters of this work, have been selected from the Author's dramatic and other poetical works, not yet published.
FIRST LOVE.
"No hut shelters Comala from the rain."
A family of travelling vagrants were overtaken on the high road just leading out of Keswick, on the Penrith side, by a gentleman on horseback. He had observed the same group begging during the entertainments of the regatta which had concluded but the evening before.
"Ho! ho! my good woman," he said, as he passed in a sling trot, "I am glad to see your boy has found his second leg!"
The woman, who appeared to be young, and who would have been handsome, had not dirt and impudence rendered her disgusting, looked behind her, and perceived that a poor, sickly, ragged child, apparently about five years old, who followed her, tired of his crutches, which pushed up his little shoulders almost out of their sockets, had contrived to loosen the bandage of his tied-up leg, and slip it down out of the dirty linen bag, in which it usually hung on the double, and from which it was not always released, even at night, as so doing necessarily incurred the further trouble of tying it up again in the morning. She laid down her bundle, and stood still with her arms a-kimbo, till, with hesitating steps, and looks of suppressed terror, her victim came up; then glancing round, to ascertain that the gentleman was out of sight, she seized the child, snatched both the crutches from his trembling hands, and grasping them in one of hers, she began to flog him without pity. He seemed used to this, for he uttered no sound of complaint; silent tears only rolled down his face.
"Ye villain!" said she at last, with a strong Cumberland accent, and gasping for breath, "it's not the first time, is it? it's not the first time I've beat you within an inch of your life for this. But I'll do for you this time: that I will! You shan't be a burden to me any longer, instead of a profit. If it wasn't for the miserable looks of ye," she added, shaking him almost to atoms as she wheeled him round, "that sometimes wrings a penny out of the folk, I'd ha' finished ye long ago." Then, with her great foot, armed with an iron-rimmed wooden shoe, she gave him a violent kick on the offending leg, continuing thus:--"Its best break the shanks on ye at ance, ye whey-faced urchin ye! and then ye'll tak te yeer crutches without biddin'!"
Finding, however, that though he had staggered and fallen forward on both hands, he had yet risen again, and still contrived to stand, she once more lifted her foot, to repeat the kick with increased force: for she was as much intoxicated by drink as by rage, and really seemed to intend to break the child's leg; but her husband, a sort of travelling tinker, coming up at the moment, and uttering a violent curse, struck her a blow that, poised as she just then was on one foot, brought her to the ground.
Free books android app tbrJar TBR JAR Read Free books online gutenberg
(0)More posts by @FreeBooks
