About this story
Nancy stands in a hotel bedroom in her Sunday black and gives Rose the truth about Monks and your name; the hue and cry closes over Jacob's Island, and you climb at dawn to Fagin's condemned cell. Fifty-three chapters carry you from a scraped breakfast bowl to a meadow with a church at one end.
How it opens
Your ninth birthday began in a bare room where too many parish children shared too little bread and heat.
Mrs Mann kept the official allowance elsewhere, but scrubbed the smallest faces whenever inspection threatened.
DickOliver, the beadle is at the gate, and she has locked two sick boys in the washhouse.
Mrs MannBless the dear children, Mr Bumble; their affection leaves me no quiet moment.
Choose
Tell the boys in the washhouse to keep warm against each other.
Perhaps Mr Bumble has come because somebody reported her.