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This edition has been proof an corrected from the original hard cover edition.***an excerpt from the beginning of the:CHAPTER IAN IMP OF WICKEDNESS IT was seven o'clock on a shining spring morning, and Warren Street was receiving its daily bath. All up and down its elm-shaded length, men and women and girls and boys were splashing and dashing and scrubbing and rubbing; and even the sun seemed willing to help, for he peered through the branches and winked and blinked as if to say, You wash the steps and the pavements, and I'll dry them.In front of No. 27 stood a personage whom the owner of the house No. 27 variously characterized as a Looby, a Good-for-nothing, a Hobbledehoy, and an Imp of Wickedness. She is the heroine of this story. Betty McGuire was a lanky girl in her fourteenth year. Her thin face was sprinkled with freckles, and her little nose was neither Greek nor Roman; but her merry deep-blue eyes and her glossy black curls suggested the best type of Irish beauty. For Betty was of Irish descent, though American by birth and by several years of knocking about in American boarding-houses.Not that Miss Betty boarded—oh, dear, no! She had been waitress, scullery-maid, and maid of all work; and once, for three blessed weeks, she had been a lady's-maid; and those weeks were the one bright chapter in her poor little career. For Miss Christabel had been so beautiful, and so sweet and gentle; more than all, she had been kind to Betty, and that had been the child's only experience with that virtue.But Miss Christabel was only as a dream now, and Betty's life in Mrs. Tucker's boarding-house was a hard and cold reality.It wasn't the work only,—she could have stood that,— but it was the injustice. It did seem that, no matter how hard she tried, she never could convince the irascible landlady of her good intentions. For Betty was a conscientious little girl, and truly tried to do right; only, the right bobbed about so, she was never sure just where to find it. Indeed, from Mrs. Tucker's point of view, the right seemed to be always the thing Betty left undone. As she stood in front of No. 27, she presented a comical picture.Dressed in a shirt-waist which had seen brighter days, and a short and skimpy old black skirt, she wore at her belt a huge bunch of daisies, and her battered and torn straw hat was loaded with the same inexpensive blossoms. Around her neck and tied under her chin in a great bow was a strip of Turkey-red calico, which Ellen the cook had given her.Betty's love of bright colors amounted almost to a passion; and as, in consequence, Mrs. Tucker prescribed only dull and dark clothes, the child was obliged to choose with great caution the times and seasons when she might fling her colors to the breeze, and this strip of Turkey red was among her most cherished possessions. It had been originally intended to enliven Ellen's collection of carpet-rags; but Betty had shown such an overwhelming desire for its possession that the good-natured cook had presented it to her; and ever since it had been a necktie, a sash, or a hat* band, as occasion required, but was always so adjusted that it could be instantly whisked off when the voice of Mrs. Tucker was heard in the land.So this morning it was a necktie-, and imparted an air of great dignity to its wearer, while she grasped firmly in her bony hands the nozzle of a garden hose, which rested its slimy, snaky black length across the pavement.A spray of water sparkled through the air, and bit the dust in the middle of the road.
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