Fan by Henry Harford Author:William Henry Hudson General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1892 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday passed sadly and slowly enough; and at five o'clock on the evening of the last day, Fan was told at St. Mary's that Margaret Harrod was dead. During those three miserable days of suspense she had spent most of her time hanging about the doors of the hospital, going timidly at intervals to inquire, and to ask to be allowed to see her mother. But her request was refused. Her mother was suffering from concussion of the brain, besides other serious injuries, and continued unconscious, and nothing was to be gained by seeing her. Without a word, without a tear, she turned away from the dreary gates and walked slowly back to Moon Street; and at intervals on her homeward walk she paused to gaze about her in a dazed kind of way, like a person who had wandered unknowingly into some distant 4 place where everything wore a strange look. The old familiar streets and buildings were there, the big shop-windows full of cheap ticketed goods, the cab-stand, and the drink- ing-fountain, the omnibuses and perpetual streams of foot-passengers on the broad pavement. She knew it all so well, and yet now it looked so unfamiliar. She was a stranger, and lost and alone there in that place and everywhere. She was walking there like one in a dream, from which there would be no more waking to -the old reality; no more begging pence from careless passers-by in the street; no more shrinking away and hiding herself with an unutterable sense of shame and degradation from the sight of some neighbour or old school acquaintance; no more going about in terror of the persecution and foul languag...« less