Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. JIMMBY PENLY. THE UNKIND FATHER. STOLEN INTERVIEWS. FATA! DISASTER. In a cottage on the opposite side of the village from the house of Mr. Gregg lived the Widow Penly, whose only companion was a little boy, her son, James Penly, familiarly known as Jimmey. Mrs. Penly had been left a widow when thirty years of age, without property, and with a child but a few weeks old. She was naturally of feeble health, and difficult was the struggle to keep hunger and cold from her door. She took in sewing, went out to wash for the neighbors, and in various ways respectably maintained herself and child. The clothing of both was composed of cheap materials, but it was cut and made with taste, and kept so clean that their garments never looked mean; and so Jimmey stood as high among his playmates as other children. The cottage was poorly furnished, and the food very simple; but everything was so neatly arranged that each room bad a comfortable and home-like aspect, and the scantily-furnished table was not without its attractions. Jimmey Penly was two years older than Delia Gregg, and when the latter was four and the former six they met for the first time on the green slope of the mountain. There was a gathering of children on the occasion, and they had a rightmerry time of it. Some of the old fathers of the town, fresh and vigorous, sitting quietly in the shade, smoking their pipes, beheld the happy children, and heartily entered into their sports, thus living over again, in imagination, their own boyhood days. As is not unfrequently the case with little children, Jim- mey and Delia seemed to form an instinctive attachment. As this beautiful pair, the one with blue eyes and the other with black eyes, stood, that afternoon, in the shadow of the tall trees, hand in hand, who...