
THE OLD CASTLE. - AND - Other Stories.
THE OLD CASTLE.
GEORGE AND ALICK.
THE SIXPENNY CALICO.
A WESTMORELAND STORY.
In the flickering glow of an old castle’s fire, a group of children huddles together on Flaxy’s birthday, the room bright with ruby‑red light and the soft scent of white candles. Their games and riddles have paused, and a unanimous cheer calls for another tale, prompting Dudley Wylde to begin a memory of his own childhood. He recalls the day he and his cousin Bernard arrived as orphaned boys under Uncle Wylde’s roof, a home already humming with the uneasy tension of envy and longing.
The narration follows young Dudley’s struggle to win his uncle’s affection while feeling eclipsed by Bernard’s graceful demeanor, a rivalry that colors every shared moment. Listeners are drawn into a world where simple playground quarrels hint at deeper questions of belonging, identity, and the fragile bonds of family. As the story unfolds, the children's eager ears promise a poignant glimpse into the heart of Victorian childhood, where love and jealousy dance as closely as the shadows on the castle walls.
Language
en
Duration
~46 minutes (44K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of public domain works in the International Children's Digital Library.)
Release date
2007-05-02
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Some of the world’s most enduring books come from writers whose names were never recorded or never revealed. “Anonymous” on a title page can mean many different things: a lost identity, a deliberate choice, or a work shaped by tradition over time.
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