Edited by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com




THE FORTUNATE YOUTH


BY
WILLIAM J. LOCKE







CHAPTER I

PAUL KEGWORTHY lived with his mother, Mrs. Button, his stepfather,
Mr. Button, and six little Buttons, his half brothers and sisters.
His was not an ideal home; it consisted in a bedroom, a kitchen and
a scullery in a grimy little house in a grimy street made up of rows
of exactly similar grimy little houses, and forming one of a hundred
similar streets in a northern manufacturing town. Mr. and Mrs.
Button worked in a factory and took in as lodgers grimy single men
who also worked in factories. They were not a model couple; they
were rather, in fact, the scandal of Budge Street, which did not
itself enjoy, in Bludston, a reputation for holiness. Neither was
good to look upon. Mr. Button, who was Lancashire bred and born,