Daybreak: A Story for Girls

								


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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 head that,
night after night, bent over them as a mother's might have done.
She was reading Milton's "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," and
only laid the book aside as the little feet gathered outside her door,
and clear, passionless voices blended in a Christmas hymn.
Then the sounds died away again in the distance, and she was left to
follow in her thoughts.



      *      *      *      *      *      *
Upstairs to the great dormitory the children crept; trying to be as
noiseless as the fairies who filled their Christmas stockings.  Maggie,
being the gentlest, led the way, and was trusted to open creaking
doors; the younger ones formed the centre of the little army, and
behind them all marched Jane, the trusted Jane, who, though she had
been one year only at the Orphanage, had won the confidence of all.
She was the daughter of honest, industrious, working people, and had
not the sad tendencies to slippery conduct which many of the little
ones possessed.  She was true in word and in deed; and no one could
measure the good of such an example amongst the children.