Yet in the midst of this murk and muck, grew a flower.
Not a peony, not even a rose; a violet, gentle and shrinking and modest, admired and worshiped, but doomed to be crushed by the heavy hobnailed boots of the ruthless underworld and the equally pitiless protagonists of respectability.
In the middle of that bleak block, in a second-story apartment, lived big, hearty Martha Geiss. She was a one-bottle and one-case bootleggers' stock exchange. She didn't handle the stuff herself, but she had worked up a trade in hotels and offices, so small buyers 'phoned her when they wanted something sent up quickly, day or night, and she in turn relayed the orders to the various petty peddlers of gin and what was supposed to be whiskey.
Her commissions were never large and her work was wearisome and confining. But she always laughed and always had enough to help others and to act as a sort of mother to all the neighbors. And she was a mother—the mother of Frances, the only thing clean and virtuous and young and lovely on Dream Street.
When 200-pound Martha parted with her husband and cast her lot with the lawbreakers she brought with her the child, who went to a school in the slums west of Broadway.
Everybody knew her and everybody protected her. Youngsters were a great novelty in those parts and Frances was an unusually winsome and friendly one.
No one around there would harm her or let anyone else even say a questionable word that she might hear.
She was physically precocious and at 14 was a ripe, full-blown beauty, shy, courteous, simply but tastily dressed. Martha's heart was set on having Frances become a schoolteacher.
Of course, the child had eyes and ears—very pretty ones. She knew that this was no kindergarten in which she lived. She saw the liquor and dope-pushers, the demi-mondes and the semi-men. She smiled at them all and they smiled back, but as close as they were to her they were far away.
In the summer vacation, when Frances was 16, going to high school, Martha's business was rather low. It always fell off in summer, when many of the customers were in the country. Frances was eager to do her share, but Martha hated to send her into the world, where, strangely, she would not get the sheltering care and affection which had always been hers on dirty, degraded Dream Street. Across the way from Martha's window, where she could look into it on summer nights, was an Italian restaurant. Caruso, the owner, was her friend and at times her customer. She suggested that he hire Frances during the vacation as a checkroom and cigarette girl.