Punch, or the London Charivari. Volume 93, September 10, 1887

( By Phil Uppes, Author of An Out-of-Luck Young Man, Jack and Jill went up the Hill, The Bishop and his Grandmother, &c. ) Ascena's Narrative.
The story which I have to tell is more than strange. It is so terrible, so incredible, so entirely contrary to all that any ordinary reader of the London Journal or the penny dreadfuls has ever heard of, that even now I have some doubt in telling it. I happen, however, to know it is true, and so does my husband. My husband will come in presently with his narrative. There! that ought to make you curious. A very good commencement.
My early life was uneventful. I was a foundling. I was left with two old ladies (I fancy I may work them up some day into character sketches) by a perfect gentleman, who, after giving them £200, went away the next morning to Vienna for ever. He left with these two old ladies a little wardrobe full of clothes, but there was not a mark, nor so much as an initial, upon a single thing. They had all been cut out with a sharp pair of scissors.
This again ought to excite your curiosity. Bear it in mind. Mysterious parentage—no mother, no marks, and father gone to Vienna for ever.
The two old ladies kept a school, in which I first was a scholar, then a teacher. There I remained until I was seventeen, when I was tall and strong for my age, and looked more like three or four and twenty. One day one of the old ladies said to me—
Now, my dear, I will tell you what we are going to do. We are going to sell the school, and buy a little cottage at Bognor. It doesn't face the sea, and just holds two. So, as we have considered you more or less our own daughter, we are going to kick you out. Now don't let's talk any more about it to-day, but tell us to-morrow at breakfast, like a dear good girl, that we are going to do what you wish.
I shall tell you to-morrow, I answered, firmly. I'll pretend to think the matter over with all my might and main, until to-morrow morning, and then give you an answer as solemnly weighed, and as carefully set out, as a Saturday afternoon essay.