Out in the open country the day was dull and grey, with low-hanging clouds and occasional drops of slow-falling rain, but in the city the clouds of smoke hung still lower than those of the sky, and the dropping soot-flakes made black the moisture gathered on the roofs of the houses, the leaves of the trees, and the sidewalks trodden by many feet.
It was on a city street, one where the smoke-clouds from the tall chimneys trailed low and the soot fell in its largest flakes, that ever and again a sound asserted itself above the beat of hurrying feet. The sound was not loud, only a little girl sobbing softly to herself as she shrank with her head on her arm at one side of an open stairway; and the words that she repeated over and over to herself, “What shall I do? Where shall I go?” were less in the nature of questions than a lamentation. But children tearful, loudly, even vociferously tearful, were in that vicinity so frequent that people passed and repassed the child without giving to her thought or heed.
For the street was one more populous than select, and while the tall red brick houses that bordered it had once aspired to something of the aristocratic, they were now hopelessly sunken to the tenement stage; while the neighboring region leading through the sandy open square of the Haymarket, where loads of hay always stood awaiting purchasers, down the long steep hill to the river, with its crowded shipping and its border of great lumber yards, shops, and factories, had never made pretense to anything except poverty of the most open and unattractive kind. In summer the whole region fairly swarmed with the overflowing inmates of the overcrowded houses. Children were everywhere, in large part barefooted, ragged, and so dirty that they might easily have been taken for an outgrowth of the sandheaps in which they burrowed and buried themselves when tired of the delights of the street. To see them there, in utter indifference to the constant passing of heavily loaded teams sometimes prompted the inquiry as to how many were daily killed? But though, on occasion, they were dragged from under the very horses’ hoofs by the untidy women whose shrill voices were so often heard sounding from open doors and windows, few were the accidents to either life or limb.
The not distant city market house increased the crowds, especially at certain hours of the day, as also the street venders and itinerants who contributed their full share to the noise and confusion. Hook-nosed old men, with bags over their shoulders, and shrill cries of “P-a-p-e-r r-a-g-s” abounded; the organ-grinder with his monkey was a frequent figure, with the invariable crowd of youngsters at his heels; the maimed and the blind, wearing placards appealing to the public sympathy and extending tin cups for contributions, were to be found on the corners; the scissors-grinder’s bell was a common sound, as were the sonorous offers of “Glassputin.” Here was a man loudly and monotonously appealing to the credulity of the public, and soliciting patronage for his wonderful fortune-telling birds, a little company of dingy and forlorn-looking canaries, who by the selection of sundry envelopes were supposed to reveal the past, present, and future. There, another man exhibited a row of plates with heavy weights attached, and extolled the wonderful merits of his cement for mending crockery, while the sellers of small wares, combs, pocketbooks, letter-paper, cheap jewelry, and the like, added their calls to the rest.
A few of the houses still retained a dingy scrap of yard, where thin and trampled grass blades made an effort to grow, but the most part had been built out to the street and converted into cheap restaurants, cheap clothing shops, cheap furniture shops, and the class of establishments that are cheap indeed, especially as regards the character of their wares.
In such a confusion of people and sounds it is not strange that a small girl crying to herself would attract so little attention that even the big, fat policeman on that beat passed her a number of times before he noticed her, and then did not stop, as he saw that she was well dressed. At last, as she still remained crouched down in a dejected little heap, he stopped, moved as much by the thought of a little girl in his own home as from a sense of duty, with the inquiry, “Here, Sis, what’s the matter with you?”
She started up at the brusque but not unkindly tone, and lifting from her sheltering arm a round and dimpled face, with wide grey eyes, now swollen and disfigured with tears, answered brokenly and in a half-frightened voice, for the policeman stood to her as the terror rather than the guardian of the law, “Oh, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know where to go!”
“You don’t, eh? Well, it seems to me you are a pretty big girl to get lost; where do you live?”
“I don’t live anywhere,” with a fresh sob.
“That’s rather queer, not to live anywhere,” and he looked at her a trifle more sternly. “What’s your name, if you have any?”