L T Meade

Sue, a Little Heroine L T Meade

Publisher Marketing: Sue made a great effort to push her way to the front of the crowd. The street preacher was talking, and she did not wish to lose a word. She was a small, badly made girl, with a freckled face and hair inclined to red, but her eyes were wonderfully blue and intelligent. She pushed and pressed forward into the thick of the crowd. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looking up, saw a very rough man gazing at her. "Be that you, Peter Harris?" said Sue. "An' why didn't yer bring Connie along?" "Hush!" said some people in the crowd. The preacher raised his voice a little higher: "'Tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee.'" Peter Harris, the rough man, trembled slightly. Sue found herself leaning against him. She knew quite well that his breath was coming fast. "His disciples and Peter," she said to herself. The street preacher had a magnificent voice. It seemed to roll above the heads of the listening crowd, or to sink to a penetrating whisper which found its echo in their hearts. The deep, wonderful eyes of the man had a power of making people look at him. Sue gazed with all her might and main. "Father John be a good un," she said to herself. "He be the best man in all the world." After the discourse-which was very brief and full of stories, and just the sort which those rough people could not help listening to-a hymn was sung, and then the crowd dispersed. Contributor Bio:  Meade, L T Mrs. L. T. Meade (Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith), was a prolific children's author of Anglo Irish extraction. Born in 1844, Meade was the eldest daughter of a Protestant clergyman, whose church was in County Cork. Moving from Ireland to London as a young woman, after the death of her mother, she studied in the Reading Room of the British Museum in preparation for her intended career as a writer, before marrying Alfred Toulmin Smith in September 1879. The author of close to 300 books, Meade wrote in many genres, but is best known for her girls' school stories. She was one of the editors of the girls' magazine, from 1887-93, and was active in women's issues. She died in 1914.