The dim, gleaming light from the doors ajar showed a narrow, moldering, broken staircase that led to the floor above.
“Come along o’ me now, dearie,” said the crone, in a coaxing tone, as she took a faster hold on the child’s hand and began to draw her up the stairs.
“Oh!—if you please—do take me—out of this—I—I—am dy—dy——”
And here Owlet fainted away, succumbing to the weakness of an imperfect convalescence, to great weariness, and, finally, to the deadly fetor of the pestilential house.
“There! by jingo!” exclaimed the crone, as she picked up the child, still very thin and light from her recent illness, and easily carried her up the rickety stairs, that creaked and bent under her footsteps, to the upper hall, which was flanked each side by tenement rooms, through whose partly open doors gleamed flickering lights and streamed foul odors.
“This here is better nor I could ’oped. Saves a desprit deal o’ trouble,” said the ragpicker, as she bore the unconscious child to the rear of the hall, and paused at a door on the lefthand side, which she pushed open with her foot.
It gave into a very small room, no bigger than a good-sized closet. It had but one window, a small, rear window, partly lighted by a distant lamp that stood in line with it on a cross street. The only furniture consisted of a huge pile of inconceivably foul rags that lay on the floor in one corner, reached halfway up to the low ceiling, and spread more than halfway over the floor.
The woman laid the child down on the edge of the pile of rags, and found a match and an end of candle, which she lighted and stuck into the neck of an empty beer bottle.
“I must make haste and git rid on her afore she comes to, and then she won’t give no trouble to nobody. Lor’, ’ow lucky she swooned hoff in this here way! Lor’, to think as ’ow I have been ’elped this day in this onexpected manner! First, I comes upon this here fine bird, with fine feathers, lost into the streets, and with waluable jewelry onto her neck, and a waluable bundle into her hand—and where is that bundle, by the same token? ’Opes it never dropped on the stairs. No! Lor’, there it is, hanging onto Fine Feathers’ arm still. Never dropped hoff when she fainted, and I picked her up! Oh! w’at luck this is! And to find the fortin in the street! And to bring her here! And jest as I were a-thinking how on airth I could get the clothes offen her back ’thout her raising the whole alley, she jest faints away like a angel, so quiet and comfortable! It do seem like a providence, it do, indeed it do! I wonder what’s in that bundle? But I ain’t got time to look now. Lor’, no. I must get Fine Feathers outen this afore she comes to, or there’ll be trouble. Lor’, yes,” concluded the crone, as she hastily drew Owlet’s bundle off her arm and hid it far under the pile of rags.
She need not have been in such haste. The swooning child was not likely to recover in that deadly room. She was much more likely to die as people die in the fumes of escaping gas or burning charcoal in an airtight place.