Silas K. Hocking

“ The last stroke of the Town Hall clock, however, had scarcely died away when she heard the patter of bare feet around the comer, and the next moment her brother, panting and breathless, stood before her.
"Oh, Nell!" he burst out, "I's just soft, I is. I's missed a hour in the time. I never did think I was such a fool. But can't be helped now, nohow."
"I was afraid you'd got hurt, Benny ; but I don't care now you're all right," said Nelly, looking proudly at the flushed face of her sturdy young brother. "Me hurt? Oh, never fear! I knows how to take care myself. ”

“ Almost as soon as she could walk she had been sent into the streets with her brother Benny, who was a year older, to get her living as best she could. Never knowing a parent's love, the affections of these two children had gone out to each other. Each to each was more than all the world beside. At the time our story opens Nelly was nine years of age, and Benny, as we said, a year older. ”

“ In the next street they caught sight of the glowing grate of Joe Wragg, the night watchman, and of Joe himself, sitting in the doorway of his little wooden hut.
"You ax him, Nell," whispered Benny;" he winna say no to you."
"May we eat our taters by your fire, Joe?" said the plaintive voice of little Nelly, as she placed her tiny hand on the fence, on which a red light was burning.
"What dost 'a say, little woman?" said Joe, in a rough though not unkindly voice.
"May we eat our taters by your fire, please — Benny an' me?" ”