She felt in her pocket for her parcel; it was safe, but her car fare was gone, and she stood a pitiful, mud-besmeared little object. Then the big tears began to come as she walked along very fast. "O dear, I'm lost!" she said to herself, "and I'll have to walk home, and Aunt Elizabeth is in a hurry, and she'll scold me! O dear! O dear! I want my own home, I do, I do." She began then to run along very fast again, to hide her tears from passers-by, and presently she came bump up against another little girl who had also been running.
The two children coming to such an abrupt standstill stared at each other. Edna saw a poor, ragged, dirty, pale-faced child with wild locks; and the little girl saw Edna with the tears still coursing down her cheeks, her pretty coat and frock stained with mud, and her hat knocked very much to one side.
It was the ragged girl who smiled first.
"I 'most knocked ye down, didn't I?" she said. "Where was ye going so fast?"
"I am going home," replied Edna, "only I don't know how to get there."
"Yer lucky."
Edna stared. "I think I'm very unlucky. What makes you say that?"
"Yer lucky ter have any home ter go ter. I ain't. Yer live somewhere, if ye don't know where it is, an' I don't live nowhere, if I know where that is."
Edna smiled at this. "Why," she said, "where are your father and mother?"
"I ain't got none. Mis' Ryan she bound me out to Mis' Hawkins, an' I ain't goin' to stay there, I ain't. She starves me an' beats me;" and the child's voice shrilled out again, "I ain't goin' ter stay, I ain't."