Read "Robin Redbreast" by Mary Louisa Molesworth online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Barmettle is not an attractive place; though like most places in this varied world it has its interests and even no doubt its charm for many of its inhabitants -- its bright and happy homes, as well as its thousands of hard, if not overworked, pale-faced artisans, men and women, of many grades and classes.
And the sun can shine there sometimes; and not so many miles from the very centre of the town, you can escape from the heavy pall of smoke-filled air, into fresh and picturesque country, whose beauties, to my thinking, strike one all the more vividly from the force of contrast with the ugliness and griminess which you cannot forget are so near.