Read "Georgina's Service Stars" by Annie Fellows Johnston online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
AWAY down the crooked street sounds a faint clang of the Towncrier's bell. Uncle Darcy is out again with it, after his long, shut-in winter. But he is coming very, very slowly. Even the warm sunshine of this wonderful May afternoon cannot quicken his rheumatic old feet so that they do more than crawl along. It will be at least half an hour before he reaches the Green Stairs. He will sit down to rest a bit on the bottom step, as he always does now, and I'll run down and meet him there.
He helps me more than anyone else, because, more than anyone else, he understands what I am enduring. He remembers what he endured all those anxious years when Danny was missing. It's a comfort to have him tell me over and over how his "line to live by" kept him afloat and brought him into port with all flags flying, and that it will do the same for me if I only hold to it fast and hard enough. So I set my teeth together and repeat grimly as he used to do: