The Project Gutenberg eBook, Daybreak, by Florence A. Sitwell

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Title: Daybreak
A Story for Girls

Author: Florence A. Sitwell

Release Date: January 3, 2007 [eBook #20260]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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DAYBREAK

A Story for Girls

by

FLORENCE A. SITWELL

[Frontispiece: "Little night-dresses rustled."]

London
S. W. Partridge & Co.
9 Paternoster Row.
1888

Contents.

CHAPTER

I. LIFE IN THE ORPHANAGE
II. THE FLIGHT
III. IN THE HOSPITAL
IV. IN A THIRD-CLASS CARRIAGE
V. BY THE SEA
VI. CHRISTMAS DAY

Illustrations.

"Little night-dresses rustled." . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

The Westminster clock tower.

St. Thomas' Hospital.

Kate and Frances.

DAYBREAK.

CHAPTER I.

LIFE IN THE ORPHANAGE.

Long before it was light, little feet were passing up and down those
great stone stairs, little voices whispered in the corridors, little
night-dresses rustled by the superintendent's door. She did not think
of sleeping, for though the moon still hung in the sky, it was
Christmas morning--five o'clock on Christmas morning at the Orphanage;
and the little ones had everything their own way on Christmas Day. So
she sat up in bed, with the candle lighted beside her, bending her head
over a book she held in her hand, and often smiling to herself as she
listened to the sounds that revealed the children's joy. She was a
grey-headed woman, with a face that might have been stern if the lines
about the mouth had not been so gentle; a face, too, that was
care-worn, yet full of peace. A tall night-cap surmounting her silvery
grey hair gave her a quaint, even laughable appearance; but the orphan
children reverenced the nightcap because they loved the he