The Runaway

This 1872 novel by a mid-Victorian poet and novelist is about a girl named Clarice, living with her widowed father and her governess 'in a charming home at a convenient (railway) distance from the city.' One day she finds a girl of her own age hiding in the shrubbery. She is Olga and 'there is no question that she is the liveliest child character in English fiction' said the Observer in 1936.