In the corner of the same cage was another steel box. I saw the stooping figure of the young girl come out of it as a dog comes out of a kennel. She walked toward the centre of the cage—she still had the baby in her arms—laid the child on the sheet-iron floor, where the light from the grimy windows fell the clearer, and returned to the steel box. The child wore but one garment—a short red-flannel shirt that held the stomach tight and left the shrivelled legs and arms bare. It lay flat on its back, its eyes gazing up at the ceiling, its pinched face in high light against the dull background. Now and then it would fight the air with its little fists or kick its toes above its head.
The girl took from the kennel a broken paper box and, returning with it, knelt beside the child and began arranging its wardrobe, the two negresses watching her listlessly. Not much of a wardrobe—only a ragged shawl, some socks, a worsted cap, a pair of tiny shoes, and a Canton-flannel wrapper, once white. This last had little arms and a short waist. The skirt was long enough to tuck around her baby's feet when she carried it.
I steadied myself by one of the musket-barrels, watched her while she folded the few pitiful garments, waited until she had guided the shrunken arms into the sleeves of the soiled wrapper and had buttoned it over the baby's chest. Then, when the lump in my throat was about to stop my breathing, I said:
"Will you come here, please, to the grating? I want to speak to you."
She raised her head slowly, looked at me in a tired, hopeless way, laid her baby back on the sheet-iron floor, and walked toward me. As she came into the glow of the overhead light, I saw that she was even younger than I had first supposed—nearer seventeen than twenty—a girl with something of the curious look of a young heifer in a face drawn and lined but with anxiety. Parted over a low forehead, and tucked behind her ears, streamed two braids of straight yellow hair in two unkempt strands over her shoulders. Across her bosom and about her slender figure was hooked a yellow-brown dress made in one piece. The hooks and eyes showed wherever the strain came, disclosing the coarse chemise and the brown of the neck beneath. This strain, the strain of an ill-fitting garment, accentuated all the clearer, in the wrinkles about the shoulders and around the hips, the fulness of her delicately modelled lines; quite as would a jacket buttoned over the Milo. On the third finger of one hand was a flat silver ring, such as is sold by the country peddlers.
She stood quite close to the bars, patiently awaiting my next question. She had obeyed my summons like a dog who remembered a former discipline. No curiosity, not the slightest interest; nothing but blind obedience. The tightened grasp of these four walls had taught her this.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.
I had to begin in some way.
"From Pineyville." The voice was that of a child, with a hard, dry note in it.
"How old is the baby?"