A Little Rebel

A Little Rebel, by Margaret
Wolfe Hungerford

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Title: A Little Rebel A Novel
Author: Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
Release Date: September 4, 2006 [EBook #19175]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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A LITTLE REBEL

A NOVEL
BY THE DUCHESS
Author of "Her Last Throw," "April's Lady," "Faith and Unfaith," etc.,
etc.

Montreal: JOHN LOVELL & SON, 23 St. Nicholas Street.
Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1891, by John
Lovell & Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics
at Ottawa.

A LITTLE REBEL.
CHAPTER I.
"Perplex'd in the extreme."
"The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid and
beautiful."
The professor, sitting before his untasted breakfast, is looking the very
picture of dismay. Two letters lie before him; one is in his hand, the
other is on the table-cloth. Both are open; but of one, the opening
lines--that tell of the death of his old friend--are all he has read;
whereas he has read the other from start to finish, already three times. It
is from the old friend himself, written a week before his death, and very
urgent and very pleading. The professor has mastered its contents with
ever-increasing consternation.
Indeed so great a revolution has it created in his mind, that his
face--(the index of that excellent part of him)--has, for the moment,
undergone a complete change. Any ordinary acquaintance now entering
the professor's rooms (and those acquaintances might be whittled down

to quite a little few), would hardly have known him. For the abstraction
that, as a rule, characterizes his features--the way he has of looking at
you, as if he doesn't see you, that harasses the simple, and enrages the
others--is all gone! Not a trace of it remains. It has given place to terror,
open and unrestrained.
"A girl!" murmurs he in a feeble tone, falling back in his chair. And
then again, in a louder tone of dismay--"A girl!" He pauses again, and
now again gives way to the fear that is destroying him--"A grown girl!"
After this, he seems too overcome to continue his reflections, so goes
back to the fatal letter. Every now and then, a groan escapes him,
mingled with mournful remarks, and extracts from the sheet in his
hand--
"Poor old Wynter! Gone at last!" staring at the shaking signature at the
end of the letter that speaks so plainly of the coming icy clutch that
should prevent the poor hand from forming ever again even such sadly
erratic characters as these. "At least," glancing at the half-read letter on
the cloth--"this tells me so. His solicitor's, I suppose. Though what
Wynter could want with a solicitor----Poor old fellow! He was often
very good to me in the old days. I don't believe I should have done even
as much as I have done, without him.... It must be fully ten years since
he threw up his work here and went to Australia! ... ten years. The girl
must have been born before he went,"--glances at letter--"'My child, my
beloved Perpetua, the one thing on earth I love, will be left entirely
alone. Her mother died nine years ago. She is only seventeen, and the
world lies before her, and never a soul in it to care how it goes with her.
I entrust her to you--(a groan). To you I give her. Knowing that if you
are living, dear fellow, you will not desert me in my great need, but
will do what you can for my little one.'"
"But what is that?" demands the professor, distractedly. He pushes his
spectacles up to the top of his head, and then drags them down again,
and casts them wildly into the sugar-bowl. "What on earth am I to do
with a girl of seventeen? If it had been a boy! even that would have
been bad enough--but a girl! And, of course--I know Wynter--he has
died without a penny. He was bound to do that, as he always lived

without one. Poor old Wynter!"--as if a little ashamed of himself. "I
don't see how I can afford to put her out to nurse." He pulls himself up
with a start. "To