The fledgling

the long version

Vitorina's escort from Lisbon to London wore a cloak of respectability which convinced the child's father and aunts, but even before the ten-year-old girl had made her disconcerting discovery of his theft from the rich, private chapel of her home, she had begun to take his measure. Circumstances, plus some contrivance on her own part, enabled the youngster to shake him off. Alone, she reached Victoria and the warm if belated welcome of her father's distant cousin and ex-fiancee, Philippa. How the gold statuette of St. Christopher had been stolen and how it reached Portugal again, how Philippa changed at the eleventh hour from one bridegroom to another and how, above all, Vitorina throve on her first taste of freedom and found her father really cared about her after all is interwoven into a delightful, readable story.