"Kind lady! Father's dead, and mother's laying ill of a fever, and baby's dying 'cause we ain't 'ad nothink to eat since yesterday!"
The woman gave Little Prue a penny, and the next moment a man stepped to her side and snatched the penny from her hand, the child making no objection.
"A suggestive scene," said Rathbeal. "The brute is the girl's father, I suppose, and she stands there in the gutter by his directions, probably repeating the speech he has drilled into her. Does not such a picture tempt you not to give? Is it not almost a justification for the existence of institutions which contend that beggary is a preventable disease?"
"Not in my eyes," replied Robert Grantham. "I have no sympathy with anti-natural societies, organized for the suppression of benevolent impulse. The endeavor to deaden charitable feeling, and to inculcate into kindly-hearted people that pity must be guided by a kind of mathematical teaching, is a deplorable mistake. Carry such a teaching out to its natural end, and the sweetest influences of our nature would be lost. Seeing what I have seen, I would not give to that poor child, but I would take her away from the brute: and the first thing I would do would be to set her down before a hot, wholesome meal. Poor little waif! See, Rathbeal, the brute is on the watch on the opposite side. Now, if Providence would take him in hand, and deal out to him what he deserves, we might give the child a foretaste of heaven."
Rathbeal, looking to the opposite side of the road, saw John Dixon approaching them, and in order that he should have a clear view of Grantham he took his friend's arm, and proceeded onward a few yards to a spot which was brilliantly lighted up. John Dixon passed them slowly, and exchanged a look of recognition with Rathbeal, which Grantham did not observe.
"It is time to get home," said Rathbeal, who, now that John Dixon was gone, saw no reason to linger.
"A moment, Rathbeal," said Grantham. "I can't get that child out of my head. Is there no way of doing her an act of kindness without the intervention of the brute?"
Little Prue had just finished another appeal in a weak, languid voice, addressed to no one in particular. She appeared to be dazed as the words dropped slowly from her bloodless lips. She could scarcely keep her eyes open; her frail body began to sway.
"She is fainting," said Rathbeal hurriedly; "the child is overpowered by want and fatigue."
The brute on the opposite side saw this also, and he started forward, not impelled by pity, but with the intention of keeping Little Prue's strength in her by means of threats. A judgment fell upon him. It was as if Providence had heard what Robert Grantham said, and had taken him in hand; for as he was crossing the road in haste he got tangled in a conflict of cabs and omnibuses, and was knocked to the ground. Rathbeal darted forward to see what had happened to him, while Grantham, taking Little Prue's hand, said some gentle words to her, which she was too exhausted to understand. A great crowd had assembled on the spot where the brute had fallen, and Rathbeal, returning, whispered to Grantham that he had been run over.