Reading - Thursday's Child

Thursday's Child by Noel Streatfeild



This is the charming story of Margaret Thursday, an orphan with very definite ideas about her destination in life, with her continual reminders that she has "three of everything of the very best quality." Accompanying her, through the harsh world of the Orphanage, the hard-working freedom of the canal barge to which she escapes, or amid the bustle and gay lights of a travelling theatre, are the Beresfords : kind Lavinia, the eldest, who has to learn to work in the kitchen of a great house; bookworm Peter, with his unpredictably practical turn of mind in a crisis; and little Horatio whom everyone loves.

And each time she was asked, 'Who do you think you might be then?' she had dozens of ready replies. Whoever she was, Margaret had made herself the arch enemy of the crel matron. Soon things reached such a dreadful state that she decided to run away from St. Luke's, but not without Peter and Horatio, and her three of everything.... So the children fled in the night to become the unlikeliest leggers ever seen on a canal boat. And Margaret proved that she was a person of the very best quality....