Her cheek flushed with pleasure.
It was a great thing to talk over, that and the ride on the elephant. Hanny found her natural history, and she and her father read about elephants most of the evening.
The days were so pleasant that the children often took Daisy out in her chair to see them at their plays. They went around to Houston Street, to the German settlement, as it was beginning to be called. Lena and Gretchen were out on their stoop with their knitting, and the baby between them. They were Lutherans, and they looked quite different from the Jews.
There were still quaint old houses in Ludlow and Orchard streets,—two stories with dormer windows in the roof, and some frame cottages with struggling grass-plots. No one dreamed of the tall tenements that were to take their places, the sewing-machines that were to hum while the workers earned their scanty pittance, and swarms of children crowded the streets.
Everybody had more leisure then. Some of the women sat and chatted while their little ones played about.
A little girl came out of an alley way with a peculiar jerky movement, like a hop and a skip, while she kept one hand on her knee. Her hip was large, her shoulder pushed up and apparently bent over.
"Hello!" she said to Hanny. "What's the matter with her?" nodding her head. "Wish't I had a cheer like that. I'd cut a great swell. My! ain't she pritty?"
"She's been ill," returned Hanny.
The child stared a moment and then hopped on.
"Her father works about the stable," explained Hanny, with rising colour. "She comes up sometimes. They're very poor. Mother gives them ever so many things. She can't stand up straight; but she doesn't seem to mind. And one leg is so much shorter. The boys call her Cricket, and Limpy Dick."