The Project Gutenberg EBook of One Day At Arle, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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Title: One Day At Arle

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Release Date: November 4, 2007 [EBook #23330]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ONE DAY AT ARLE ***

Produced by David Widger

ONE DAY AT ARLE

By Frances Hodgson Burnett

Copyright, 1877

One day at Arle--a tiny scattered fishing hamlet on the northwestern
English coast--there stood at the door of one of the cottages near the
shore a woman leaning against the lintel-post and looking out: a woman
who would have been apt to attract a stranger's eye, too--a woman young
and handsome. This was what a first glance would have taken in; a second
would have been apt to teach more and leave a less pleasant impression.
She was young enough to have been girlish, but she was not girlish in
the least. Her tall, lithe, well-knit figure was braced against the
door-post with a tense sort of strength; her handsome face was just at
this time as dark and hard in expression as if she had been a woman with
years of bitter life behind her; her handsome brows were knit, her lips
were set; from head to foot she looked unyielding and stern of purpose.

And neither form nor face belied her. The earliest remembrances of the
coast people concerning Meg Lonas had not been over-pleasant ones. She
had never been a favorite among them. The truth was they had half feared
her, even as the silent, dogged, neglected child who used to wander up
and down among the rocks and on the beach, working harder for her scant
living than the oldest of them. She had never a word for them, and never
satisfied their curiosity upon the subject of the treatment she received
from the ill-conditioned old grandfather who was her only living
relative, and this last peculiarity had rendered her more unpopular than
anything else would have done. If she had answered their questions
they might have pitied her; but as she chose to meet them with stubborn
silence, they managed to show their dislike in many ways, until at last
it became a settled point among them that the girl was an outcast in
their midst. But ev