D. B. McKean.
LITTLE FÉ.
So he was left an heir at the age of ten years—heir to all the fortune of his dead aunt, which consisted of two shillings and fourpence, a flower-basket, a pebble with a hole drilled through it, and a dying woman's blessing. "Truly," you will say, "he was rich."
He was small and thin, this little heir, and one poor leg was drawn up three inches higher than the other, which obliged him to walk with those wooden things called crutches. He was called Fé; but his name was of very little use to him, as he could neither read nor write it.
An old woman had promised "to see after him for a bit" at his aunt's death. She lived in a room in the same wretched lodging-house which had sheltered Fé and his aunt for the past six years.
I have not told you yet that my heir did not live in London, but in a large busy town in the south of England.
Fé's temporary guardian, Mrs. Crump, was short and cross, and not very young; her nose was slightly hooked, her eyes were black, and rather sharp. She wore a jet black frizzled wig, which contrasted well with the primrose-tinted skin; her voice showed her bad temper, for it was sharp and harsh, like the creaking of a door.
After having settled and arranged everything, she bade Fé follow her into her black little room, and that was the last he ever saw of his poor little old home, where for ten long grown-up years he had lived, to go to rest weak, hungry, and ill, and to rise more weak, hungry, and miserable still. Yet in that little home there had also lived a thin, worn-out woman, who had never spoken a harsh word to him, but had often tried to stay his tears with her kisses. And Fé knew now—and the knowledge was agony—that he would never rest his eyes upon that sweet mother-face again.