[A Perilous Secret by Charles Reade]@TWC D-Link bookA Perilous Secret CHAPTER I 4/18
So William Hope paid every debt he owed in Liverpool, took his child to her mother's tombstone, and prayed by it, and started to cross the island, and then leave it for many a long day. He had a bundle with one brush, one comb, a piece of yellow soap, and two changes of linen, one for himself, and one for his little Grace--item, his fiddle, and a reaping hook; for it was a late harvest in the north, and he foresaw he should have to work his way and play his way, or else beg, and he was too much of a man for that.
His child's face won her many a ride in a wagon, and many a cup of milk from humble women standing at their cottage doors. Now and then he got a day's work in the fields, and the farmer's wife took care of little Grace, and washed her linen, and gave them both clean straw in the barn to lie on, and a blanket to cover them.
Once he fell in with a harvest-home, and his fiddle earned him ten shillings, all in sixpences.
But on unlucky days he had to take his fiddle under his arm, and carry his girl on his back: these unlucky days came so often that still as he travelled his small pittance dwindled.
Yet half-way on this journey fortune smiled on him suddenly.
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