Sue, A Little Heroine

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SUE
A LITTLE HEROINE

by

L. T. MEADE

Author of
"A Girl from America," "The Princess of the Revels,"
"Polly, a New-Fashioned Girl," "A Sweet Girl Graduate," etc.

New York
The New York Book Company
1910

BIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. T. Meade (Mrs. Elizabeth Thomasina Smith), English novelist, was born
at Bandon, County Cork, Ireland, 1854, the daughter of Rev. R. T. Meade,
Rector of Novohal, County Cork, and married Toulmin Smith in 1879. She
wrote her first book, _Lettie's Last Home_, at the age of seventeen and
since then has been an unusually prolific writer, her stories attaining
wide popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.

She worked in the British Museum, living in Bishopsgate Without, making
special studies of East London life which she incorporated in her
stories. She edited _Atlanta_ for six years. Her pictures of girls,
especially in the influence they exert on their elders, are drawn with
intuitive fidelity; pathos, love, and humor, as in _Daddy's Girl_,
flowing easily from her pen. She has traveled extensively, being devoted
to motoring and other outdoor sports.

Among more than fifty novels she has written, dealing largely with
questions of home life, are: _David's Little Lad_; _Great St.
Benedict's_; _A Knight of To-day_ (1877); _Miss Toosey's Mission_;
_Bel-Marjory_ (1878); _Laddie; Outcast Robbin, or, Your Brother and
Mine_; _A Cry from the Great City_; _White Lillie and Other Tales_;
_Scamp and I_; _The Floating Light of Ringfinnan_; _Dot and Her
Treasures_; _The Children's Kingdom: the Story of Great Endeavor_; _The
Water Gipsies_; _A Dweller in Tents_; _Andrew Harvey's Wife_; _Mou-setse:
A Negro Hero_ (1880); _Mother Herring's Chickens_ (1881); _A London
Baby: the Story of King Roy_ (1883); _Hermie's Rose-Buds and Other
Stories_; _How it all Came Round_; _Two Sisters_ (1884); _Autocrat of
the Nursery_; _Tip Cat_; _Scarlet Anemones_; _The Band of Three_; _A
Little Silver Trumpet_; _Our Little Ann_; _The Angel of Love_ (1885); _A
World of Girls_ (1886); _Beforehand_; _Daddy's Boy_; _The O'Donnells of
Inchfawn_; _The Palace Beautiful_; _Sweet Nancy_ (1887); _Deb and the
Duchess_ (1888); _Nobody's Neighbors_; _Pen_ (1888); _A Girl from
America_ (1907).

CONTENTS

I. BIG BEN'S VOICE. 1
II. A SERVANT OF GOD. 3
III. GOOD SECURITY. 7
IV. SOLITARY HOURS. 9
V. EAGER WORDS. 10
VI. DIFFERENT SORT OF WORK. 12
VII. SHOPPING. 21
VIII. COMPARISONS. 26
IX. A TRIP INTO THE COUNTRY. 31
X. THE RETURN TO LONDON. 35
XI. A NEW DEPARTURE. 44
XII. LEFT ALONE. 48
XIII. PETER HARRIS. 60
XIV. THE SEARCH. 66
XV. CONCENTRATION OF PURPOSE. 69
XVI. PICKLES. 74
XVII. CINDERELLA. 78
XVIII. THE METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE. 79
XIX. A SAINTLY LADY. 83
XX. CAUGHT AGAIN. 87
XXI. SAFE HOME AT LAST. 94
XXII. NEWS OF SUE. 105
XXIII. AMATEUR DETECTIVE. 109
XXIV. MOTHER AND SON. 112
XXV. ABOUT RONALD. 113
XXVI. TWO CUPS OF COFFEE. 124
XXVII. DELAYED TRIAL. 127
XXVIII. CINDERELLA WOULD SHIELD THE REAL THIEF. 130
XXIX. A LITTLE HEROINE. 132
XXX. WHAT WAS HARRIS TO HER? 134
XXXI. A STERN RESOLVE. 136
XXXII. AN UNEXPECTED ACCIDENT. 137
XXXIII. A POINTED QUESTION. 138
XXXIV. PICKLES TO THE FORE AGAIN. 141
XXXV. THE WINGS ARE GROWING. 142
XXXVI. A CRISIS. 143
XXXVII. THE HAPPY GATHERING. 151

SUE: A LITTLE HEROINE.

CHAPTER I.

BIG BEN'S VOICE.

Sue made a great effort to push her way to the front of the crowd. The
street preacher was talking, and she did not wish to lose a word. She
was a small, badly made girl, with a freckled face and hair inclined to
red, but her eyes were wonderfully blue and intelligent. She pushed and
pressed forward into the thick of the crowd. She felt a hand on her
shoulder, and looking up, saw a very rough man gazing at her.

"Be that you, Peter Harris?" said Sue. "An' why didn't yer bring Connie
along?"

"Hush!" said some people in the crowd.

The preacher raised his voice a little higher:

"'Tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee.'"

Peter Harris, the rough man, trembled slightly. Sue found herself
leaning against him. She knew quite well that his breath was coming
fast.

"His disciples and Peter," she said to herself.

The street preacher had a magnificent voice. It seemed to roll above the
heads of the listening crowd, or to sink to a penetrating whisper which
found its echo in their hearts. The deep, wonderful eyes of the man had
a power of making people look at him. Sue gazed with all her might and
main.

"Father John be a good un," she said to herself. "He be the best man in
all the world."

After the discourse--which was very brief and full of stories, and just
the sort which those rough people could not help listening to--a hymn
was sung, and then the crowd dispersed.

Sue was amongst them. She was in a great hurry. She forgot all about
John Atkins, the little street preacher to whom she had been listening.
She soon found herself in a street which was gaily lighted; there was a
gin-palace at one end, another in the middle, and another at the farther
end. This was Saturday night: Father John was fond of holding vigorous
discourses on Saturday nights. Sue stopped to make her purchases. She
was well-known in the neighborhood, and as she stepped in and out of one
shop and then of another, she was the subject of a rough jest or a
pleasant laugh, just as the mood of the person she addressed prompted
one or other. She spent a few pence out of her meager purse, her
purchases were put into a little basket, and she found her way home. The
season was winter. She turned into a street back of Westminster; it went
by the name of Adam Street. It was very long and rambling, with broken
pavements, uneven roadways, and very tall, narrow, and dirty houses.

In a certain room on the fourth floor of one of the poorest of these
houses lay a boy of between ten and eleven years of age. He was quite
alone in the room, but that fact did not at all insure his being quiet.
All kinds of sounds came to him--sounds from the street, sounds from
below stairs, sounds from overhead. There were shrieking voices and ugly
laughter, and now and then there were shrill screams. The child was
accustomed to these things, however, and it is doubtful whether he heard
them.

He was a sad-looking little fellow, with that deadly white complexion
which children who never go into the fresh air possess. His face,
however, was neither discontented nor unhappy. He lay very still, with
patient eyes, quite touching in their absolute submission. Had any one
looked hard at little Giles they would have noticed something else on
his face--it was a listening look. The sounds all around did not
discompose him, for his eyes showed that he was waiting for something.
It came. Over and above the discord a Voice filled the air. Nine times
it repeated itself, slowly, solemnly, with deep vibrations. It was "Big
Ben" proclaiming the hour. The boy had heard the chimes which preceded
the hour; they were beautiful, of course, but it was the voice of Big
Ben himself that fascinated him.

"Ain't he a real beauty to-night?" thought the child. "How I wishes as
Sue 'ud hear him talk like that! Sometimes he's more weakly in his
throat, poor fellow! but to-night he's in grand voice."

The discord, which for one brief moment was interrupted for the child by
the beautiful, harmonious notes, continued in more deafening fashion
than ever. Children cried; women scolded; men cursed and swore. In the
midst of the din the room door was opened and a girl entered.

"Sue!" cried Giles.

"Yes," answered Sue, putting down her basket as she spoke. "I'm a bit
late; there wor a crowd in the street, and I went to hear him. He wor
grand."

"Oh, worn't he?" said Giles. "I never did know him to be in such
beautiful voice."

Sue came up and stared at the small boy. Her good-natured but somewhat
common type of face was a great contrast to his.

"Whatever are you talking about?" she said. "You didn't hear him; you
can't move, poor Giles!"

"But I did hear him," replied the boy. "I feared as I'd get off to
sleep, but I didn't. I never did hear Big Ben in such voice--he gave out
his text as clear as could be."

"Lor', Giles!" exclaimed Sue, "I didn't mean that stupid clock; I means
Father John. I squeezed up as close as possible to him, and I never
missed a word as fell from his lips. Peter Harris were there too. I
wonder how he felt. Bad, I 'spect, when he remembers the way he treated
poor Connie. And oh, Giles! what do yer think? The preacher spoke to him
jest as clear as clear could be, and he called him by his name--Peter.
'Tell His disciples and Peter,' Father John cried, and I could feel
Peter Harris jump ahind me."

"Wor that his text, Sue?"

"Yes, all about Peter. It wor wonnerful."

"Well, my text were, 'No more pain,'" said the boy. "I ache bad nearly
always, but Big Ben said, 'No more pain,' as plain as he could speak,
poor old fellow! It was nine times he said it. It were werry
comforting."

Sue made no reply. She was accustomed to that sort of remark from Giles.
She busied herself putting the kettle on the fire to boil, and then
cleaned a little frying-pan which by-and-by was to toast a herring for
Giles's supper and her own.

"Look what I brought yer," she said to the boy. "It were turning a bit,
Tom Watkins said, and he gave it me for a ha'penny, but I guess frying
and a good dash of salt 'ull make it taste fine. When the kettle boils
I'll pour out your tea; you must want it werry bad."

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't," answered Giles. "It's 'No more pain' I'm
thinking of. Sue, did you never consider that maybe ef we're good and
patient Lord Christ 'ull take us to 'eaven any day?"

"No," answered Sue; "I'm too busy." She stood for a minute reflecting.
"And I don't want to go to 'eaven yet," she continued; "I want to stay
to look after you."

Giles smiled. "It's beautiful in 'eaven," he said. "I'd like to go, but
I wouldn't like to leave you, Sue."

"Take your tea now, there's a good fellow," answered Sue, who was
nothing if not matter-of-fact. "Aye, dear!" she continued as she poured
it out and then waited for Giles to raise the cup to his lips, "Peter
Harris do look bad. I guess he's sorry he was so rough on Connie. But
now let's finish our supper, and I'll prepare yer for bed, Giles, for
I'm desp'rate tired."

CHAPTER II.

A SERVANT OF GOD.

John Atkins, the street preacher, was a little man who led a wonderful
life. He was far better educated than most people of his station, and in
addition his mind was tender in feeling and very sensitive and loving.
He regarded everybody as his brothers and sisters, and in especial he
took to his heart all sorrowful people. He never grumbled or repined,
but he looked upon his life as a pilgrimage to a better country, and did
not, therefore, greatly trouble if things were not quite smooth for him.
This little man had a very wide circle of friends. The fact is, he had
more power of keeping peace and order in the very poor part of London,
back of Westminster, where he lived, than had any dignitary of the
Church, any rector, any curate, or any minister, be he of what
persuasion he might. Father John was very humble about himself. Indeed,
one secret of his success lay in the fact that he never thought of
himself at all.

Having preached on this Saturday evening, as was his wont, to a larger
crowd than usual, he went home. As he walked a passer-by could have seen
that he was lame; he used a crutch. With the winter rain beating on him
he looked insignificant. Presently he found the house where he had a
room, went up the stairs, and entered, opening the door with a
latch-key. A fire was burning here, and a small paraffin lamp with a red
shade over it cast a warm glow over the little place. The moment the
light fell upon Father John his insignificance vanished. That was a
grand head and face which rose above the crippled body. The head was
high and splendidly proportioned. It was crowned with a wealth of soft
brown hair, which fell low on the shoulders. The forehead was lofty,
straight, and full; the mouth rather compressed, with firm lines round
it; the eyes were very deep set--they were rather light gray in color,
but the pupils were unusually large. The pupils and the peculiar
expression of the eyes gave them a wonderful power. They could speak
when every other feature in the face was quiet.

"I don't like them--I dread them," said Peter Harris on one occasion.
"Aye, but don't I love 'em just!" remarked little Giles.

Giles and Sue were special friends of John Atkins. They had, in fact,
been left in his care by their mother three years before this story
begins. This was the way they had first learned to know Father John.

The man had a sort of instinct for finding out when people were in
trouble and when they specially needed him. There was a poor woman lying
on her dying bed, and a boy and a girl were kneeling close to her.

"Keep a good heart up, Giles," she said to the boy. "I know I'm goin' to
leave yer, and you're as lame as lame can be, but then there's Sue. Sue
has a deal o' gumption for such a young un. Sue won't let yer want,
Giles, lad; you need never go to the workhouse while Sue's alive."

"No, that he needn't, mother," answered Sue.

"Can't yer get back on to yer sofa, Giles?" she added, turning to the
boy. "You'll break your back kneeling by mother all this time."

"No, I won't; I'd rather stay," answered the boy. His eyes were full of
light; he kept on stroking his mother's hand.

"Go on, mother," he said. "Tell us more. You're goin' to 'eaven, and
you'll see father." A sob strangled his voice for a minute.

"Yes, I'll see my good 'usband--that is, I hope so; I can but trust--I
allus have trusted, though often, ef I may say the truth, I couldn't
tell what I were a-trusting to. Somehow, whatever folks say, there _is_
a Providence."

"Oh, mother!" said Giles, "God is so beautiful--when you see father
again you'll know that."

"Mother," interrupted Sue, "does yer think as Providence 'ull get me
constant work at the sewing, enough to keep Giles and me?"

"I dunno, Sue," answered the woman. "I've trusted a good bit all my
life, and more specially since your father was took, and somehow we
haven't quite starved. Happen it'll be the same with Giles and you."

The boy sighed. His back was aching terribly. His heart was breaking at
the thought of losing his mother; he struggled to continue kneeling by
the bedside, but each moment the effort became greater.

The children were kneeling so when a quick, light step was heard on the
stairs, and a little man entered. It was too dark in the room for the
children to see his face; they heard, however, a very pleasant voice. It
said in cheerful tones:

"Why haven't you fire here, and a candle? Can I help you?"

"There ain't much candle left," answered Giles.

"And mother's dying," continued Sue. "She don't mind the dark--do yer,
mother?"

The little man made no reply in words, but taking some matches from his
pocket, and also a candle, he struck a light. He placed the candle in a
sconce on the wall, and then turned to the three.

"Be yer a parson?" asked the woman.

"I am a servant of God," answered Atkins.

"I'm real glad as you're a parson," she answered; "you can make it all
right between Almighty God and me."

"You are mistaken; I can't do that. That is Jesus Christ's work. But I
will pray with you--let me hold your hand, and we will pray together."

Then and there in the dismal attic Father John spoke out his heart in
the following simple words. Even Sue never forgot those words to the
latest day she lived:

"Lord God Almighty, look down upon this dying woman. Thy Son died for
her and she knows it not. Lord, she is in great darkness, and she is so
near death that she has no time to learn the truth in its fullness; but
Thou who art in the light can show some of Thy light to her. Now, in her
dying hour, reveal to her Thyself."

The dying woman fixed her glittering eyes on the strange man. When he
ceased speaking she smiled; then she said, slowly:

"I allus felt that I could trust in Providence."

She never spoke after that, and half an hour afterwards she died.

This was the beginning of Father John's friendship with Giles and Sue.

The next day Sue, by dint of many and anxious inquiries, found him out,
and put her queer little unkempt head into his room.

"Ef yer please, parson, may I speak to yer 'bout Giles and me?"

"Certainly, my little girl. Sit down and tell me what I can do for you."

"Parson," said Sue, with much entreaty in her voice and many a pucker on
her brow, "what I wants to say is a good deal. I wants ter take care o'
Giles, to keep up the bit o' home and the bit o' victual. It 'ud kill
Giles ef he wor to be took to the work'us; and I promised mother as I'd
keep 'im. Mother wor allers a-trustin', and she trusted Giles ter me."

Here Sue's voice broke off into a sob, and she put up her dirty apron to
her eyes.

"Don't cry, my dear," answered Atkins kindly; "you must not break your
word to your mother. Will it cost you so much money to keep yourself and
Giles in that little attic?"

"It ain't that," said she, proudly. "It ain't a bit as I can't work, fur
I can, real smart at 'chinery needlework. I gets plenty to do, too, but
that 'ere landlady, she ain't a bit like mother; she'd trusten nobody,
and she up this morning, and mother scarce cold, and says as she'd not
let her room to Giles and me 'cept we could get some un to go security
fur the rent; and we has no un as 'ud go security, so we must go away
the day as mother is buried, and Giles must go to the work'us; and it
'ull kill Giles, and mother won't trust me no more."

"Don't think that, my child; nothing can shake your mother's trust where
God has taken her now. But do you want me to help you?"

Sue found the color mounting to her little, weather-beaten face. A fear
suddenly occurred to her that she had been audacious--that this man was
a stranger, that her request was too great for her to ask. But something
in the kindness of the eyes looking straight into hers brought sudden
sunshine to her heart and courage to her resolve. With a burst, one word
toppling over the other, out came the whole truth:

"Please, sir--please, sir, I thought as you might go security fur Giles
and me. We'd pay real honest. Oh, sir, will you, jest because mother did
trusten so werry much?"

"I will, my child, and with all the heart in the world. Come home with
me now, and I will arrange the whole matter with your landlady."

CHAPTER III.

GOOD SECURITY.

John Atkins was always wont to speak of Sue and Giles as among the
successes of his life. This was not the first time he had gone security
for his poor, and many of his poor had decamped, leaving the burden of
their unpaid rent on him. He never murmured when such failures came to
him. He was just a trifle more particular in looking not so much into
the merits as the necessities of the next case that came to his
knowledge. But no more, than if all his flock had been honest as the
day, did he refuse his aid. This may have been a weakness on the man's
part; very likely, for he was the sort of man whom all sensible and
long-headed people would have spoken about as a visionary, an
enthusiast, a believer in doing to others as he would be done by--a
person, in short, without a grain of everyday sense to guide him. Atkins
would smile when such people lectured him on what they deemed his folly.

Nevertheless, though he took failure with all resignation, success, when
it came to him, was stimulating, and Giles and Sue he classed among his
successes.

The mother died and was buried, but the children did not leave their
attic, and Sue, brave little bread-winner, managed not only to pay the
rent but to keep the gaunt wolf of hunger from the door. Sue worked as a
machinist for a large City house.

Every day she rose with the dawn, made the room as tidy as she could for
Giles, and then started for her long walk to the neighborhood of
Cheapside. In a room with sixty other girls Sue worked at the
sewing-machine from morning till night. It was hard labor, as she had to
work with her feet as well as her hands, producing slop clothing at the
rate of a yard a minute. Never for an instant might her eyes wander from
the seam; and all this severe work was done in the midst of an
ear-splitting clatter, which alone would have worn out a person not
thoroughly accustomed to it.

But Sue was not unhappy. For three years now she had borne without
breaking down this tremendous strain on her health. The thought that she
was keeping Giles in the old attic made her bright and happy, and her
shrill young voice rose high and merry above those of her companions.
No; Sue, busy and honest, was not unhappy. But her fate was a far less
hard one than Giles's.

Giles had not always been lame. When first his mother held him in her
arms he was both straight and beautiful. Though born of poor parents and
in London, he possessed a health and vigor seldom bestowed upon such
children. In those days his father was alive, and earning good wages as
a fireman in the London Fire Brigade. There was a comfortable home for
both Sue and Giles, and Giles was the very light and sunshine of his
father's and mother's life. To his father he had been a special source
of pride and rejoicing. His beauty alone would have made him so. Sue was
essentially an everyday child, but Giles had a clear complexion,
dark-blue eyes, and curling hair. Giles as a baby and a little child was
very beautiful. As his poor, feeble-looking mother carried him
about--for she was poor and feeble-looking even in her palmy
days--people used to turn and gaze after the lovely boy. The mother
loved him passionately, but to the father he was as the apple of his
eye.

Giles's father had married a wife some degrees below him both
intellectually and socially. She was a hard-working, honest, and
well-meaning soul, but she was not her husband's equal. He was a man
with great force of character, great bravery, great powers of endurance.
Before he had joined the Fire Brigade he had been a sailor, and many
tales did he tell to his little Giles of his adventures on the sea. Sue
and her mother used to find these stories dull, but to Giles they seemed
as necessary as the air he breathed. He used to watch patiently for
hours for the rare moments when his father was off duty, and then beg
for the food which his keen mental appetite craved for. Mason could both
read and write, and he began to teach his little son. This state of
things continued until Giles was seven years old. Then there came a
dreadful black-letter day for the child; for the father, the end of
life.

Every event of that torturing day was ever after engraved on the little
boy's memory. He and his father, both in high spirits, started off for
their last walk together. Giles used to make it a practice to accompany
his father part of the way to his station, trotting back afterwards
safely and alone to his mother and sister. To-day their way lay through
Smithfield Market, and the boy, seeing the Martyrs' Monument in the
center of the market-place, asked his father eagerly about it.

"Look, father, look!" he said, pointing with his finger. "What is that?"

"That is the figure of an angel, lad. Do you see, it is pointing up to
heaven. Do you know why?"

"No, father; tell us."

"Long ago, my lad, there were a lot of brave people brought just there
where the angel stands; they were tied to stakes in the ground and set
fire to and burned--burned until they died."

"Burned, father?" asked little Giles in a voice of horror.

"Yes, boy. They were burned because they were so brave they would rather
be burned than deny the good God. They were called martyrs, and that
angel stands there now to remind people about them and to show how God
took them straight to heaven."

"I think they were grand," answered the boy, his eyes kindling. "Can't
people be like that now?"

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