“I don’t know what is a s’loon or mus’um, ma’am. Goblin Hall is a fine house where Lady lives. It has trees, and flowers, and chickens and Ducky Darling. And, please, I am lost, and can’t find it.”
“Oh! you are lost?” inquired the crone, devouring, with her eyes the rich dress, the fine hat and the coral trinkets worn by the child, and the bundle carried in her hand.
“Yes, ma’am, please, lost; and I want to go home.”
“Where did you say you wanted to go to?”
“To Goblin Hall, ma’am.”
“Oh! I know the place! I’ll take yer straight there, my little lady,” said the hag, gloating over the finery of the child, and counting how many glasses of rum she could buy with the money for which she could pawn the hat, the dress, the coral ornaments, and the contents of the bundle.
“Oh! thank you, ma’am. Lady will——” Owlet was about to add, “pay you well for bringing me home,” but an innate delicacy caused her to pause before offering so poor a woman pay for a kind action, and to say, instead—“will be ever so much obliged to you.”
“All right. Come along o ’me,” said the hag, hoisting her huge bundle upon her shoulders, rising and taking the child’s hand.
CHAPTER XX
OWLET’S GREAT PERIL
“W’at be yer sniffing at, young un?” demanded the horrible creature, as she drew the child along, hurrying as fast as she could down a narrow, crowded street leading out of East Broadway into, perhaps, the most poverty stricken, squalid, Heaven-forsaken quarter of the city. “W’at be yer sniffing at?”