Read "Little Joe Gander" by Sabine Baring-Gould online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"There's no good in him," said his stepmother, "not a mossul! " With these words she thrust little Joe forward by applying her knee to the small of his back, and thereby jerking him into the middle of the school before the master. "There's no making nothing out of him, whack him as you will."
Little Joe Lambole was a child of ten, dressed in second-hand, nay, third-hand garments that did not fit. His coat had been a soldier's scarlet uniform, that had gone when discarded to a dealer, who had dealt it to a carter, and when the carter had worn it out it was reduced and adapted to the wear of the child. The nether garments had, in like manner, served a full-grown man till worn out; then they had been cut down at the knees. Though shortened in leg, they maintained their former copiousness of seat, and served as an inexhaustible receptacle for dust. Often as little Joe was "licked" there issued from the dense mass of drapery clouds of dust. It was like beating a puff-ball.