Prosperity's Child
9781465678874
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
THE November day, which had been dull and chilly, was closing in, and a thick mist was settling over the metropolis, making the traffic in the streets slow and difficult, and causing those whose business lay in the city no small anxiety as to how they would reach their various suburban homes that night; for, as was patent to everybody, in a very short while all London would be enveloped in a dense fog. In the sitting-room of a certain small villa at Streatham, a family group was assembled around the fire, talking and laughing. It comprised, Mrs. Wyndham and her five children—Ruth and Violet, aged fifteen and fourteen respectively; Madge, who was twelve; and Frank and Billy, who were twins of not quite ten years old. The gas had not been lit, but the fire fitfully illuminated the room, which was certainly anything but neat or well kept, for the furniture was dull if not actually dusty, the lace curtains on either side of the window were soiled and limp, and the tea-cloth on the table was crumpled and not over clean. Even in the kindly firelight the room looked poor and neglected, and yet it was evident that its general appearance might have been improved at very little cost. "I hope your father will come home soon for it's getting very foggy, I see," Mrs. Wyndham remarked by-and-by when there was a pause in the children's chatter. Her voice was soft and musical, with a plaintive note in it. "He coughed continually during the night, he quite alarmed me," she added, with a deep-drawn sigh. "I heard him," the eldest girl said, turning a pair of serious, dark eyes from the fire to her mother's face; "I spoke to him about it after breakfast, and he said he would get some cough mixture from a chemist: I hope he won't forget." "I hope not," Mrs. Wyndham replied. "I am sure it is no wonder that he ails so often," she proceeded, "always rushing here, there, and everywhere as he does, getting his meals so irregularly, and wearing clothes which do not properly protect him from the cold and damp. He ought to have both a new overcoat and a new waterproof this winter, but how he is to get either I really do not know. Dear me, it's nearly five o'clock. I hope Barbara has the kettle on the boil: I wish one of you would go and see—not you, Billy, you're always quarrelling with Barbara, you tease her and make her cross. Let Madge go. And Violet, you light the gas and pull down the blind."
