A World of Girls by L.T. Meade

Annie continued her walk. The circumstances of the last two months had combined to do for her what nothing had hitherto effected. When a little child she had known hardship and privation, she had passed through that experience which is metaphorically spoken of as "going down hill. " As a baby little Annie had been surrounded by comforts and luxuries, and her father and mother had lived in a large house, and kept a carriage, and Annie had two nurses to wait on herself alone. These were in the days before she could remember anything. With her first early memories came the recollection of a much smaller house, of much fewer servants, of her mother often in tears, and her father often away. Then there was no house at all that the Forests could call their own, only rooms of a tolerably cheerful character -- and Annie's nurse went away, and she took her daily walks by her mother's side and slept in a little cot in her mother's room. Then came a very, very sad day, when her mother lay cold and still and fainting on her bed, and her tall and handsome father caught Annie in his arms and pressed her to his heart, and told her to be a good child and to keep up her spirits, and, above all things, to take care of mother.

Then her father had gone away; and though Annie expected him back, he did not come, and she and her mother went into poorer and shabbier lodgings, and her mother began to try her tear-dimmed eyes by working at church embroidery, and Annie used to notice that she coughed a good deal as she worked. Then there was another move, and this time Mrs. Forest and her little daughter found themselves in one bedroom, and things began to grow very gloomy, and food even was scarce. At last there was a change. One day a lady came into the dingy little room, and all on a sudden it seemed as if the sun had come out again. This lady brought comforts with her -- toys and books for the child, good, brave words of cheer for the mother. At last Annie's mother died, and she went away to Lavender House to live with this good friend who had made her mother's dying hours easy.