The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hawthorns, by Amy Walton

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Title: The Hawthorns
A Story about Children

Author: Amy Walton

Illustrator: Unknown

Release Date: April 27, 2007 [EBook #21232]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HAWTHORNS ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Hawthorns; a Story about Children

by Amy Walton
__________________________________________________________

This is a nice little book, which would certainly appeal to
its intended audience of eleven- or twelve-year-old little
girls. Its background is distinctly late Victorian, but
nevertheless a modern child would find nothing it could not
relate to other than the more pleasant general atmosphere
of those days.

Amy Walton has written a sequel to this book, "Penelope and
the Others," also published on the Athelstane website.
NH
__________________________________________________________

THE HAWTHORNS; A STORY ABOUT CHILDREN

BY AMY WALTON

CHAPTER ONE.

EASNEY VICARAGE.

Quite close to the nursery window at Easney Vicarage there grew a very
old pear-tree. It was so old that the ivy had had time to hug its trunk
with strong rough arms, and even to stretch them out nearly to the top,
and hang dark green wreaths on every bough. Some day, the children had
been told, this would choke the life out of the tree and kill it; that
would be a pity, but there seemed no danger of it yet, for every spring
the pear-tree still showed its head crowned with white blossoms, and
every summer the pears grew yellow and juicy, and fell with a soft
"splosh!" on the gravel path beneath. It was interesting to watch that,
and it happened so often, that it was hard to imagine a windsor pear
without a great gash where the sharp stones had cut into it; it was also
natural to expect when you picked it up that there would be a cunning
yellow wasp hidden somewhere about it, for all the little Hawthorns had
always found it so except the baby, and she was too small to have any
experience. Five little Hawthorns, without counting the baby, had
looked out of the nursery window and watched the pear-tree blossom