Nora threw her arms about his neck, and said, “O Paul, how good it is to have a brother! If I didn’t have you, I shouldn’t have anybody.”
That night they crept under the cart; for it was rainy. But first they covered the ground with some old straw. “How good it is to have a cart over us,” said Nora, “and straw to sleep on!” But Paul bade her stop talking; for he was tired.
After he was asleep, Nora crept out to pay a visit to her window. She called it her window. It was on the back-piazza of a nice house. The curtains hung apart a little, leaving a crack; and every night she paid a visit here to watch the undressing and putting to bed of a little girl.
She could see the laughing face as it peeped through the long, white night-gown, and the rosy toes as they came out of their stockings. She could see the little girl’s arms holding tight around the mother’s neck, and the mother’s arms holding tight her little girl. She could also both see and hear the kisses; and, by putting her ear close to the window, could sometimes catch the very words of the evening hymn. Nothing seemed to her half as beautiful as this; for it was the only singing of that kind she had ever heard.
But on this particular night she dared not stay long at the window; for Paul had said they must start out of the city by daybreak to look for bones, and had bade her go to sleep early. She only waited to see the little girl’s hair brushed, and then to see her spat the water about in the wash-bowl.
After creeping under the cart, where Paul was sleeping, she put out her hands to catch the rain-drops, and washed her face. Molly the rag-picker had given her an old comb she had found in a dirt-barrel, and a faded handkerchief. For these she had given a bit of cake. To be sure, the cake was dry, and required a stone to break it; but it contained two plums; and, when Molly made the trade, she was thinking of her little lame boy at home. And so Nora sat up in the straw, and combed out her pretty hair. It was long (for there was no one to cut it), and of a most lovely color. To tell the truth, there was not a child in all the street whose hair was half as beautiful.
“I cannot be undressed,” she thought, “because I have no night-clothes; and I cannot be kissed or sung to sleep, because I have only Paul. And Paul—he couldn’t; oh, no! Paul doesn’t know the way; but I can do this.”
And, while thinking such thoughts as these, she combed out her long hair just as she had seen the little girl’s mother do; and, by tying the three-cornered handkerchief under her chin, she kept it smooth.
The next morning they set forth at sunrise to search for bones, swinging the basket between them.
“How bright the sun shines!” said Nora: “now our clothes will dry.” And, when they were out of the city, she said, “No matter for shoes now, Paul, the grass is so soft.”