Chrystabel; or, Clouds with Silver Linings
Emma Jane Worboise Chrystabel, the narrator of the novel (nine years old when the story begins), is no sweet and heart-broken child. When gently assured by the family lawyer that although the house and furniture are all to be sold, "I am sure you may keep any little thing you like", her immediate response is "There is a skull on the lower landing window-seat that I should like to have. I have always dusted it and taken care of it."
It's no wonder Chrystabel is unlike other literary heroines of her era: for "My solitary life and the injudicious course of reading which had been permitted had fostered in me a singular and unhealthy growth of character, as unpleasing as it was unusual in a girl not yet ten years old. And to crown all, I was allowed to live in a state which was as near as it could be in a Christian country to actual heathenism; and I had never, as far as I can recollect, exchanged ideas with another child."
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512 Pages