Great Britain -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Peddlers -- Fiction; Riots -- England -- Fens, The -- Fiction
Her father! The daily associate; the one person to whom she could
always speak with frankness, with whom she had had but one interest;
the one person who had watched over her, cared for her, loved her—that
he should be suffering, that he might be removed! The idea was more
than her young heart could bear. Cheap Jacks are human beings, they
have like feelings to us who buy not of Cheap Jacks, but of respectable
tradesmen. Cheap Jacks' daughters, though they have not had the
privileges of the moral and intellectual training that have ours, are
nevertheless—human beings. We admit this tacitly, but do not think out
the truth such an admission contains—that they have in their natures
the same mixed propensities, in their hearts the same passions as
ourselves—as have our own children.
Now this poor child ran, her pulses beating; as she ran, with every
rush of blood through her pulses, a fire shot in electric flashes
before her eyes. She continuously cried, 'Help! help! My father! my
daddy!'
Then her breath failed her. She tried to run, but was forced to stay
her feet and gasp for breath. She could not maintain her pace as well
as call for assistance.
There was a roaring as of the sea over a bar when the tide is coming
in. It was the roar of her thundering blood in her ears.
She had taken the van lantern and had set it down by her father on the
side of the bank. As she was forced to halt, she looked back. A shudder
came over her. She could not see the light. Had it expired, and with
it, had the flickering light of life expired in her father?
Then she stepped partly down the bank, and now she saw the light. From
the top she had not been able to see it owing to the slope, and for
a slight curve in the direction of the canal. The light that burned
by her father's side was still there. And before her she could see
the sparks in the direction she was pursuing. A strange medley of
lights—were there two or three or more? She could not count, owing to
her excitement and the tears and sweat that streamed over her eyes.
She ran on, as the furious throbbing of her heart was allayed, as her
breath returned.
Suddenly—a crash, a flash as of lightning, and Zita knew not where she
was, and for how long she had been in a state of semi-consciousness.
The poor child, running with full speed, had run against one of the
barriers set up across the top of the embankment for the prevention of
its employment by wheeled vehicles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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