POOR AND PROUD; OR, THE FORTUNES OF KATY REDBURN.
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CHAPTER I.

KATY REDBURN AND OTHERS ARE INTRODUCED.


"Give me a flounder, Johnny?" said a little girl of eleven,
dressed in coarse and ragged garments, as she stooped down and
looked into the basket of the dirty young fisherman, who sat with
his legs hanging over the edge of the pier.

"I'll bet I won't," replied Johnny, gruffly, as he drew the
basket out of the reach of the supplicant. "You needn't come
round here tryin' to hook my fish."

"You hooked 'em," said another juvenile angler who sat on the
capsill of the pier by Johnny's side.

"Who says I hooked 'em?" blustered Johnny, whose little dirty
paws involuntarily assumed the form of a pair of fists,
scientifically disposed and ready to be the instruments of the
owner's vengeance upon the traducer of his character.

"I say so," added Tommy Howard, who did not seem to be at all
alarmed at the warlike attitude of his fellow-angler.

"Say it again, and I'll smash your head," continued Johnny,
jumping up from his seat.