“Who are you?” repeated the man.
“Snooks,” said Lawrence.
“Dressed like that, sittin’ in an auto?” cried the beggar. “You must ’a’ found your folks!”
“No; I am driving for the man who owns this car,” said Lawrence, his sense of caution keeping back the facts of the case. “I never found my folks.”
“You want to advertise,” said the man. “Tell you all I know about ’em for a dollar. Thanks! See that there Moll, she read about gettin’ ransoms for folks and she hired out for nursemaid. I never knew who to. She didn’t trust me, an’ me married to her lawful! But one day ’bout sundown she sneaked in with two kids dressed dandy. And I ast her what was it she had, and she said, ‘Oh, about two hundred thousand dollars.’ I didn’t like it, an’ I said so, so she got mad and walked off with the two little beggars down toward the river.
“She told me afterwards. She took off the little fellers’ shoes and stockin’s. It was ragin’ hot, mid-summer; and she laid them on the bank with her own hat and their little bunnits, and then she let ’em paddle. They just could walk. How she told it, she just turned round, and there was one of ’em out in the current a-sinkin’, and the other rollin’ down the bank. She grabbed him, but the other had went; and she was so scared she comes runnin’ home and there we was with another kid, which was you. Moll didn’t go away nor nothin’, but we kep’ close about it, because it might ’a’ meant the chair. They found the bunnits, and nex’ day or so they got the other kid’s body. And the papers said Moll and the two kids was all drownded. But you wasn’t drownded. And Moll used to say that woman in the pitcher Moll had in her bag would’ve gave a million dollars to get a track of you, but we didn’t darst do a thing. Besides,” said the man, “there’s a plenty of kids!”
“Can’t you remember the name of the people?” asked Lawrence anxiously.
With a look of sly cunning, the man shook his head. “No, I don’t remember. They don’t want you by now, and you are all right. Let sleepin’ dogs lay is my motter. I ain’t goin’ to put my head in no noose to oblige anybody. What they ever done for me, I say?”
“I won’t tell on you,” begged Lawrence.
The man looked around, then as he saw a procession of some sort moving gaily up the avenue, he said, “No, you don’t get no chance. You are doin’ well. Let sleepin’ dogs lay,” and dodged quickly across the line of the procession and was lost to sight, just a miserable human fragment on the tide of humanity.