"Down there, drunk again," he replied, pointing his thin finger in the direction of what in other houses would be the kitchen, but which was his "home," if it could be dignified by so sacred a name.
Pollie looked sorrowfully on the poor boy, whose thin, wizened face, with large, hungry eyes, was placed on a shrunk and distorted body. His mother was the pest of the court, always drunk, and in her drunken fury beating her wretched offspring. Half-starved and half-clothed, he passed his time on the door-step, gazing vacantly at the passers-by, uncared for, unloved amidst the many.
"Poor Jimmy!" repeated the little girl. "Would you like some of my sweet violets?"
The boy, unused to even a breath of kindness, gazed some few seconds at her with his eager eyes.
"You be Pollie Turner, bain't yer, what lives upstairs with yer mother?" he asked at last.
"Yes," she replied, and repeated her question, as she took some of the flowers from her last bunch. "Would you like these?"
He held out his claw-like hand—so dirty that Pollie almost shrank from touching it as she gave him the violets. He took them without a word of thanks, but as she was moving away he called out—
"I say, did yer make these?"
"No, Jimmy," she replied, as she came back to him; "God made them."
"God!" he repeated, "Who's He; Him's mighty clever to fix up these little bits of things, bain't He?"