Emily's Penny Dreadful Read Online Free Page B

Crying big, fat
tears Miley slunk from the house. In her hurry, she forgot to take
her coat, her winter shawl and the money from her Hippo Bank. She
also left her parapluie behind. (Everyone else called it an
umbrella but Miley had once heard a very fashionable lady use the
work ‘parapluie’ and she much preferred it to ‘umbrella’. So there!
If that was what being precocious meant, Miley was glad she was too
clever by far. Better than being a bad-tempered dumb-bum like her
sister!)
    Miley stumbled down some dark, dank streets
and through cold and narrow laneways, without a clue as to where
she was going. People walked past her, nearly all of them going in
the opposite direction. A
    man big about the waist, maybe the
biggest-waisted
    man Miley had ever seen in her whole entire
life,
    bumped into her. It was hardly surprising.
There was barely room in this particular laneway for one
person,
    much less two. The big-waisted man didn’t
even try to
    move aside for Miley. He didn’t said sorry,
or anything.
      More tears filled
Miley’s eyes. When she had at last wiped them dry with her little
lace handkerchief she saw she was somewhere she had never been
before.
      She realized she was
LOST.
      AND it had started
to rain.
     

Chapter 3
     
    Tall buildings seemed to drape themselves
over Miley, like her heavy winter shawl (which she had left
behind), but they didn’t make her feel at all warm. No, not a
bit.
      Miley was terribly
scared. And she suddenly felt tired, and oh! so weary. She wanted
nothing more than to lie down and rest.
      That was when she
spotted the open doorway. Where does that lead, she
wondered?
      There was a
signboard above the doorway. Written in
    scraggly letters, it said:
     
    The Devil’s Element
      And
underneath:
    Inward Goods
Only.
     
      The Devil’s Element
meant nothing to Miley but she hoped the doorway might lead to
somewhere warm and dry.
      Miley slipped
inside. She descended some steep, wooden steps and found herself in
an empty cellar room with a small truckle bed inside it.
      The room was dry but
not at all warm. Shivering, Miley lay herself down. Above her, a
high window gleamed in the weak, wet glow of lamplight from
the
    street above. Soon she had fallen fast
asleep, still wearing her day clothes.
      So, now you know how
Miley got there.
     

Chapter 4
     
    Something woke Miley.
      She sat up in the
truckle bed, her heart pounding like
    waves thumping their fists on the beach
during a stormy night. She felt thirsty. Luckily, she heard a
tap
    running somewhere. But wait, it wasn’t a
tap. It was
    rain. It was funny how the two things
sounded alike.
      Miley looked up at
the high window. The rain lashed the glass and flowed down the
leadlight strips. The wind was howling, too.
      It was, in fact, a
dark and stormy night.
      Then Miley
remembered she was not in her own bed. She was not in her own room.
The window was not her window. It was far too high off the
ground.
      And, worse than any
of these things, her Mama had not been there to read her a lovely
story before she fell asleep.
      Everything was
different. So horribly different!
      It struck Miley that
all she had left in the world were the clothes on her back. She was
penniless and alone.
      The cellar was a
dark and dismal dungeon. It was so dark that Miley could not see
even her hand in front of her nose. Her heart began to palpitate.
Her knees knocked together. Her teeth chattered.
      Then Miley heard a
door open. A sudden sharp but flickering light sparked into the
cellar. It lit up a
    staircase. This was not the same staircase
that Miley
    had descended. This second staircase was
right opposite the first.
      The light went out
and then came back on again.
    What a funny light it was, thought Miley.
Noisy and smelly, as well as flickering. It reminded her of
something but what, exactly, she couldn’t remember
straightaway.
      She heard footsteps
coming down the steps. Miley leapt up from the