It was while he was picturing the Tombs from the corner of Franklin Street that a boy who had watched everything he did from the moment he stopped there, tapped him on the sleeve, and said, “Say, d’yer want a good picture?” The boy tossed his head in the direction of Baxter Street with a wink so jolly that Allan concluded that the suggested subject must be amusing at least, but he followed the boy for the space of half a block, when the boy, who had been trotting ahead, halted with a laugh before the steps of a dirty, empty-looking house.
On the steps was what appeared from a little distance like a bundle of soiled rags; but when Allan drew near he saw that there was a living creature in the rags,—an old woman lying as if she had fallen there, a rumpled black bonnet in her lap, her head resting against the rail, and her yellow, wrinkled face upturned to the sun.
The boy giggled as if he thought it all a vast joke; but Allan shuddered and looked about as if in wonder that no one had come to help the woman; and when he saw a fat policeman strolling toward him he hurried forward to say: “Officer, here’s a sick woman. Shouldn’t some one get her out of the sun? She may be dying.”
The policeman looked at Allan with an expression which Allan did not understand. For a moment the policeman looked at the woman; then he spat into the street, and said, “I don’t think she’s dyin’ yet,” smiled at Allan, and continued his walk.
Allan’s face grew hot, and he wanted to shout, “You’re a brute!” after the policeman, when a girl came out of the doorway of the house where the woman lay, and seeing the object on the steps, came forward and began shaking the woman as if to arouse her. The girl had a sad face. Allan thought she looked as if she had cried very often.
The woman opened her eyes finally, and Allan, placing his camera on the steps, helped the woman to rise, and by the aid of Allan and the girl the woman tottered up the steps and through the doorway.
“We live upstairs,” said the sad-faced girl, quietly. Allan knew that this was a request to help a little longer. It was hard work on the stairs, for the steps were steep and narrow, and the old woman trembled violently.
When they had reached the top, the girl, with a grateful look, said, “I’m much obliged.” The old woman did not speak. As he came downstairs an ugly girl with a baby in her arms said to Allan, “Mrs. Grimmins is drinkin’ very hard again.”
Allan went out without a word. He was so much upset that he did not notice at first that his camera had gone. Almost at the moment when he did discover his loss, he saw the camera in the hands of a boy who was scudding around the corner.
