I nodded my head to her, but a barefooted derelict ahead of me heard her request, and wheeling around suddenly bade the child be off and offered to pose for me herself.
Velasquez would have jumped at the chance, but I am not Velasquez and I shook my head and hurried on.
The vehemence of the old woman's vituperative assault on the little girl had collected a lot of loungers of both sexes, and I was besieged for pictures, the pretty little girl saying incessantly, "I as't you firrst. I as't you firrst. I as't you firrst."
I managed to make her understand that if she walked on far enough I would take her picture, and only one other heard her, another little girl who was pretty enough to grace a film.
These two kept on, while the others dropped away when they saw I was adamant.
And when my models were far enough from the others to enable me to get them before it was suspected what I was at I snapped them and put my hand into my pocket to get up a couple of coppers and found nothing but a sixpence.
Of course the children could not change it, and I could not very well divide it, so I appealed to some fishermen who were lounging on the quay, asking them if they could give me coppers for a sixpence.
They gave me to understand that both coppers and sixpences were strangers to them, and evidently felt that, as a "rich American" I could easily give each child a shilling. But this would have been to get the whole pack on me, for they already smelt money and were coming up.
So I gave the sixpence to the one who had first spoken to me and told her to keep fourpence for herself and to give tuppence to her little friend.