: The Little Gentleman by Stooke Eleanora H Marquand E R Illustrator - Girls Juvenile fiction; Grandparent and child Juvenile fiction; Poor families Juvenile fiction; Kindness Religious aspects Christianity Juvenile fiction

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CHAPTER

THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN

MELINA MAKES A FRIEND

"HULLOA, Melina, where are you going? How is it you aren't at school? You'd best look out or your Granny'll get the attendance officer around her again about you, and then she'll give you what you won't like!"

The scene was the corner of Jubilee Terrace, a row of small red-brick cottages on the outskirts of Hawstock, a large provincial west of England town, on a cold January morning; and the speaker--William Jones--was a tall, well-grown boy of about twelve years of age, comfortably clad, who had that minute emerged from one of the cottages and encountered an ill-tempered-looking little girl, a year or so his junior, to whom he had addressed himself.

"D' you think I'm afraid of the attendance officer?" demanded the little girl, who was called Melina Berryman. She spoke in a high, shrill voice, the voice of a scold, and her manner was argumentative. "And I ain't afraid of Gran either, so there!" she added.

The boy laughed unbelievingly, whilst his blue eyes twinkled with amusement as they travelled over his companion from the crown of her battered hat, decorated with a draggled plume of cocks' feathers, to the tips of her toes, which had worn through her stockings and were peeping out of her shabby boots. He was not really an unkind boy; but Melina Berryman was the butt of all the children who lived in Jubilee Terrace, and he found considerable amusement in teasing her. It was such fun to bait her into an ungovernable passion, to see her thin white countenance distorted with anger and her big eyes flash, and to listen to the volley of abuse which would flow so glibly from her lips when, facing her tormentor, she would look for all the world like a little wild animal, with her lips drawn back from her gleaming white teeth, and her shock of tousled hair.

"I ain't afraid of Gran either," she repeated, and she nodded her head knowingly; "she can't wollop me now." Her tone was triumphant.

"Why not?" asked the boy. "She gave it to you last week. I heard her; and I heard you afterwards--crying. My, how you did go on!"

Melina flushed and bit her lip, then scowled. She and her grandmother, her father's mother, occupied the cottage next door to the one in which William Jones, who was an only child, lived with his parents, a respectable couple who had but little intercourse with old Mrs. Berryman, who--the truth must be told--did not bear a good reputation and was addicted to drink. The inhabitants of Jubilee Terrace were nearly all of the working classes, people who laboured honestly; therefore they had been anything but pleased when old Mrs. Berryman, who it was said earned her livelihood by money-lending to the poorest of the poor, had a year or so previously taken up her abode at No. 2. She was a cross-grained woman who never passed a civil word with anybody, and it was generally thought that she was unkind to Melina, which was indeed a fact.

"You were at it for the best part of an hour, I should think," the boy proceeded, "howling like a good 'un! I wondered how you could keep it up. If you hadn't stopped when you did, mother would have paid Mrs. Berryman a visit; she threatened to, and--"

"Oh, I'm very glad she didn't," interrupted Melina; "if she had, Gran would have served me worse than ever afterwards."

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