The Great Shadow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Some years before, when I was still but a lad, there had come over to us / upon a five weeks' visit the only daughter of my father's brother. / Willie Calder had settled at Eyemouth as a maker of fishing nets, and he / had made more out of twine than ever we were like to do out of the / whin-bushes and sand-links of West Inch. So his daughter, Edie Calder, / came over with a braw red frock and a five shilling bonnet, and a kist / full of things that brought my dear mother's eyes out like a partan's. / It was wonderful to see her so free with money, and she but a slip of a / girl, paying the carrier man all that he asked and a whole twopence / over, to which he had no claim. She made no more of drinking / ginger-beer than we did of water, and she would have her sugar in her / tea and butter with her bread just as if she had been English.

I took no great stock of girls at that time, for it was hard for me to / see what they had been made for. There were none of us at Birtwhistle's / that thought very much of them; but the smallest laddies seemed to have / the most sense, for after they began to grow bigger they were not so / sure about it. We little ones were all of one mind: that a creature / that couldn't fight and was aye carrying tales, and couldn't so much as / shy a stone without flapping its arm like a rag in the wind, was no use / for anything. And then the airs that they would put on, as if they were / mother and father rolled into one; for ever breaking into a game with / "Jimmy, your toe's come through your boot," or "Go home, you dirty boy, / and clean yourself," until the very sight of them was weariness.