Two Prisoners by Thomas Nelson Page — Read

The big house, the back of which, with its double porticos and great white pillars, Molly could see away up on the hill across the intervening squares, was almost as different from the rickety tenement in which the little cripple lay as daylight is from darkness. It was on one of the highest points in the best part of the city, and was set back in grounds laid off with flower beds and surrounded by a high iron fence. In front it looked out on a handsome park, where fountains played, and at the back, while it looked over a very poor part of the town, filled with small, wretched looking houses, they were so far beneath it that they were almost as much separated from it as though they had been in another city. A high wall and a hedge quite shut off everything in that direction, and it was only from the upper veranda that one knew there was any part of the town on that side. Here, however, Mildred, the little girl that Molly saw with her doll and puppy, liked best to play.

Mildred was the daughter of Mr. Glendale, one of the leading men in the city, and she lived in this house in the winter. In the summer she lived in the country, in another house, quite as large as this, but very different. The city house was taller than that in the country, and had finer rooms and handsomer things. But, somehow, Mildred liked the place in the country best. The house in the country was long and had many rooms and curious corners with rambling passages leading to them. It was in a great yard with trees and shrubbery and flowers in it, with gardens about it filled with lilacs and rosebushes, and an orchard beyond, full of fruit trees. Green fields stretched all about it, where lambs and colts and calves played. And when in the country Mildred played out of doors all day long.