Janet; or, The Christmas Stockings

by Louise Élise Gibbons

1899

DEDICATED

(BY PERMISSION)

TO THE RIGHT REVEREND

HENRY CODMAN POTTER, D.D., D.C.L.

BISHOP OF NEW YORK

JANET

I

IN the doorway of an old tenement-house, far down in the slums of New York, two women were standing, their heads close together as they gossiped about the passers-by.

A young girl—she might have been thirteen—tripped along the sidewalk, kicking her legs out in front of her as she went, so that she could see her stockings.