Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
On her head perched a cap, a scarlet flower, cut from an odd scrap of old wall paper. In her hands Tania clasped a ridiculous bundle, done up in a dirty handkerchief. "You strange little witch!" exclaimed Madge. "However did you find your way here?
She could understand better than Madge the scene the young girl pictured. "Tania was eight years old when her mother died," finished Madge pensively. "Since then poor Tania has had such a dreadful time, living with that wretched old Sal, who has made a regular slavey of her, and she just had to go on with her pretending in order to be able to bear her life at all." Madge and Mrs.
Tania held long conversations with these birds in the mornings and in the late afternoons. She told them all her troubles, and how very much she would like to get away from the place where she was now staying. However, the birds were great gad-abouts during the day, and Tania could hardly blame them. There was one fat, fatherly robin that became Tania's particular friend.
She caught one glimpse of Tania's mute, white face and stopped short in time to hear Philip say: "Even if you do tell that old Sal is my mother, Tania, no one will believe you. She herself will deny it and help me to have you shut up," declared Philip Holt menacingly. Madge caught each word as though it had been addressed to her.
First, she pulled desperately at Tania's shoe, hoping she could free her body. A suffocating weight had begun to press down on her chest. She could hear a roaring and buzzing in her ears. She knew enough of the water to realize that she had been too long underneath; she should rise to the surface again to get her breath. But she dared not wait so long to release Tania.
Her audience watched her breathlessly, for the effect of the child's grace had been almost magical. "Wasn't that a wonderful performance?" whispered Tom in Madge's ear. "The child is an artist! Where do you suppose she learned to dance like that?" But Tania had come back to earth in a brief second.
It was the expression on Mrs. Curtis's face that made Madge appreciate what Tania was doing. "What on earth is Tania about?" exclaimed Lillian in puzzled tones. She saw the child standing before a young man who was evidently teasing her and refusing her request for money. "She has been dancing like a monkey with a hand organ," answered Philip Holt scornfully.
When she discovered the threat that Philip held over Tania if she told his secret, the little captain went to Mrs. Curtis with the story. She did not wish her friend to be deceived by the young man, so she confided to Mrs. Curtis that Philip Holt, who was supposedly the son of some old friends, was really the child of old Sal of the tenements. Mrs. Curtis thought that Madge must be mistaken.
Madge, Eleanor, and the strange little girl stood on the street corner almost alone. "Are you good fairies who have strayed away from home?" inquired Tania, calmly gazing first at Madge and then at Eleanor. She was perfectly self-possessed and asked her question as though it were the most natural one in the world. The two girls stared hard at the child.
"If I ever needed anything to convince me that Philip Holt stole Tania away from us that would do it," she returned indignantly. "Little Tania slept every night with her hair tied up with a scarlet ribbon so as to keep it out of her eyes. When we find where Philip Holt is we shall find Tania, and if I have any say in the matter he shall answer to the law for what he has done."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking