Betty Vivian by L.T. Meade

It was a rough stone house, quite bare, only one story high, and without a tree growing anywhere near it. It stood on the edge of a vast Scotch moor, and looked over acres and acres of purple heather -- acres so extensive that the whole country seemed at that time of year to be covered with a sort of mantle of pinky, pearly gold, something between the violet and the saffron tones of a summer sunset.

Three girls were seated on a little stone bench outside the lonely, neglected-looking house. They were roughly and plainly dressed. They wore frocks of the coarsest Scotch tweed; and Scotch tweed, when it is black, can look very coarse, indeed. They clung close together -- a desolate-looking group -- Betty, the eldest, in the middle; Sylvia pressing up to her at one side; Hetty, with her small, cold hand locked in her sister's, on the other.