The Project Gutenberg EBook of Willie the Waif, by Minie Herbert

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Title: Willie the Waif

Author: Minie Herbert

Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19936]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIE THE WAIF ***

Produced by Andrew Hodson

WILLIE THE WAIF

BY MINIE HERBERT

_FULLY ILLUSTRATED_

LONDON S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO. 8 & 9 PATERNOSTER ROW

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME. 7

II. A FRIEND IN NEED

III. THE MISSION SCHOOL

IV. A VISITOR FOR WILLIE

V. THE CHRISTMAS TREAT

VI. LITTLE BERTRAM

WILLIE THE WAIF

---o---

CHAPTER I

RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME

One hot summer's day the sun was trying to shine into a poor, miserable
alley in London. There are some places in that great city where even the
sun cannot find its way, and Primrose Place was one of them.

It was a very narrow court, and the houses on both sides were so high that
the people who lived there had never seen the sunbeams shining on the
pavement or glinting on the windows. But even supposing the sun could have
shone into the court, it would not have been able to pierce into the
rooms, for the windows were too dirty. Most of them were broken and
patched with brown paper. The doors of the houses always stood open,
so that people could go in and out without knocking. Very few of them
could afford to pay enough rent to have two rooms all to themselves,
so that a whole family was generally huddled into one room, in which they
had to live during the day and sleep at night. But most of the daytime was
spent by the inhabitants of Primrose Place out of doors, lounging about on
the pavement, or sitting on the doorsteps.

On this day, if you had walked down the court, you would have seen groups
of women standing round the doors gossiping, with their sleeves rolled up
to their elbows, and nothing on their heads. This was the way they all
spent their time when they were not in the beershops, one of which stood,
as usual, at each corner of the court. These women never had time to clean
their rooms, even if they had known they were dirty