A BRAVE GIRL.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume II, Issue 149, 24 August 1880, Page 4

A BRAVE GIRL.

It is not often that a greater presence of mind, or a quicker inventive faculty is shown, than that which was exhibited by Susan Gervin, aged 17, upon the occasion of a forcible entry being made into her master’s house. The story, as told by the girl herself in the Woolwich Police Court, is simple. Between one and two o’clock in the morning she was awoke by hearing someone making a noise at the kitchen window, and thought it was somebody belonging to the household. Presently the door was burst vioffintly open, and she heard the footsteps of a man, who she then felt sure was a burglar. She resolved to be quiet and pretend to be asleep, but she saw the man enter her room, look at her, and then turn out the lamp, which she usually kept burning all night. His next proceeding was to take off his boots, belt and cap. Pretending to awake, she said, “Ned, what have you done with the light 1 It’s a nice way to serve your sister, to take her light away. I must get another.” The prisoner stood beside the bed in silence and she got out and she ran upstairs and aroused her master. To feign sleep with a burglar in the room requires some nerve and presence of mind, but many women would be capable of lying perfectly quiet under the circumstancs. The power tc- invent a plea to leave the room is, however, a far higher gift, and the readiness of the girl’s invention, and the ingenuity of the conjuring up of a fictitious brother, is a mental feat of a very high order. Most people have felt, under some circumstances or other the difficulty of inventing an excuse at a short notice. At other times there would be no difficulty in concocting a fictitious tale, but the imaginative faculty of the mind, when called suddenly into action, generally breaks down. This girl, who, knowing there was a man in her room, and believing, no doubt, that at any moment she might be attacked, could invent this story, and utter it in a calm and natural voice, has all the qualities of an ideal heroine, and, had she been differently placed in life, would probably have turned out an imaginative writer of the highest class. —Evening Standard, 11th June.