"Well, whatever made you lie to the lady 'bout bein' hungry?"
"I never lied. She ast me if I wanted her to give me somethin' to eat. I thought she meant like a beggar. I wasn't goin' to take it that way, but I never minded takin' it like—like—company."
Nance pondered the matter for a while silently; then she asked suddenly:
"Say, Dan, if folks are borned poor white trash, they don't have to go on bein' it, do they?"
CHAPTER VII
AN EVICTION
The three chief diversions in Calvary Alley, aside from fights, were funerals, arrests, and evictions. Funerals had the advantage of novelty, for life departed less frequently than it arrived: arrests were in high favor on account of their dramatic appeal, but the excitement, while intense, was usually too brief to be satisfying; for sustained interest the alley on the whole preferred evictions.
The week after Nance and Dan had reported to Mrs. Purdy, rumor traveled from house to house and from room to room that the rent man was putting the Lewises out. The piquant element in the situation lay in the absence of the chief actor. "Mis' Lewis" herself had disappeared, and nobody knew where she was or when she would return.
For many years the little cottage, sandwiched between Mr. Snawdor's "Bung and Fawcett" shop and Slap Jack's saloon had been the scandal and, it must be confessed the romance of the alley. It stood behind closed shutters, enveloped in mystery, and no visitor ventured beyond its threshold. The slender, veiled lady who flitted in and out at queer hours, and whom rumor actually accused of sometimes arriving at the corner in "a hack," was, despite ten years' residence, a complete stranger to her neighbors. She was quiet and well-behaved; she wore good clothes and shamefully neglected her child. These were the meager facts upon which gossip built a tower of conjecture.
As for Dan, he was as familiar an object in the alley as the sparrows in the gutter or the stray cats about the garbage cans. Ever since he could persuade his small legs to go the way he wanted them to, he had pursued his own course, asking nothing of anybody, fighting for his meager rights, and becoming an adept in evading the questions that seemed to constitute the entire conversation of the adult world. All that he asked of life was the chance to make a living, and this the authorities sternly forbade until he should reach that advanced age of fourteen which seemed to recede as he approached. Like most of the boys in the gang, he had been in business since he was six; but it was business that changed its nature frequently and had to be transacted under great difficulty. He had acquired proficiency as a crap-shooter only to find that the profession was not regarded as an honorable one; he had invested heavily in pins and pencils and tried to peddle them out on the avenue, only to find himself sternly taken in hand by a determined lady who talked to him about minors and street trades. Shoe-shining had been tried; so had selling papers, but each of these required capital, and Dan's appetite was of such a demanding character that the acquisition of capital was well nigh impossible.