Saved by Love by Emma Leslie

ELFIE had probably never heard the maxim, "Honesty is the best policy; " and if she had, she certainly would not have believed it. She knew how much, or rather how little, she could earn by fair work; knew, too, that some of her companions would laugh at her for trying to be honest; but she did not know how hard the struggle would be until she fairly tried it. It had been easy enough to slip into the habit of pilfering, but it was not so easy to break it off, when once it was commenced. Again and again did she wish that she had never taken the first wrong step, never formed the evil habit of taking what was not her own, and sometimes she feared she should never be able to break it off now.

Things grew worse and worse with the two girls as the winter advanced. Often they were without fire and without food, except the market refuse Elfie brought home. Susie had tried again and again to get a place such as the grocer's, but no one wanted a girl, it seemed, or at least no one wanted her. It must be that everybody believed her to be a thief, she thought; and Elfie thought so too, and that made her so bitter that she said one day, "I won't try to be honest any longer: everybody says I am a thief, and so I may as well be one; it's better to steal than to starve."