The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Meg's Children, by Hesba Stretton

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Title: Little Meg's Children

Author: Hesba Stretton

Illustrator: Harold Copping

Release Date: November 28, 2009 [EBook #30555]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE MEG'S CHILDREN ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Illustration: Cover art]

[Frontispiece: Looking out for Father]

Little Meg's Children

BY HESBA STRETTON

Author of 'Jessica's First Prayer,'
'Alone in London,' 'Pilgrim Street,'
'No Place Like Home,' etc.

WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY HAROLD COPPING

And other Illustrations

LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

56 PATERNOSTER ROW AND 65 ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD

1905

Contents

CHAP.

I. MOTHERLESS
II. LITTLE MEG AS A MOURNER
III. LITTLE MEG'S CLEANING DAY
IV. LITTLE MEG'S TREAT TO HER CHILDREN
V. LITTLE MEG'S NEIGHBOUR
VI. LITTLE MEG'S LAST MONEY
VII. LITTLE MEG'S DISAPPOINTMENT
VIII. LITTLE MEG'S RED FROCK IN PAWN
IX. LITTLE MEG'S FRIENDS IN NEED
X. LITTLE MEG AS CHARWOMAN
XI. LITTLE MEG'S BABY
XII. THE END OF LITTLE MEG'S TROUBLE
XIII. LITTLE MEG'S FATHER
XIV. LITTLE MEG'S FAREWELL

Little Meg's Children

CHAPTER I

Motherless

In the East End of London, more than a mile from St Paul's Cathedral,
and lying near to the docks, there is a tangled knot of narrow streets
and lanes, crossing and running into one another, with blind alleys and
courts leading out of them, and low arched passages, and dark gullies,
and unsuspected slums, hiding away at the back of the narrowest
streets; forming altogether such a labyrinth of roads and dwellings,
that one needs a guide to thread a way among them, as upon pathless
solitudes or deserts of shifting sands. In the wider streets it is
possible for two conveyances to pass each other; for in some of them,
towards the middle of their length, a sweeping curve is taken out of
the causeway on either side to allow of this being done; but in the
smaller and closer streets there is room spared only for the passage to
and fro of single carts, while here