“It’s so lovely and quiet,” the young lady pleaded.
Ardelia shuddered. Again she seemed to hear that fiendish, mournful wailing:
“Knee deep! Knee deep! Knee deep!”
“It smells so good, Ardelia! All the green things!”
Good! that hot, rustling breeze of noonday, that damp and empty evening wind!
They rode in silence. But the jar and jolt of the engine made music in Ardelia’s ears; the crying of the hot babies, the familiar jargon of the newsboy:
“N’Yawk moyning paypers! Woyld! Joynal!” were a breath from home to her little cockney heart.
They pushed through the great station, they climbed the steps of the elevated track, they jingled on a cross-town car. And at a familiar corner Ardelia slipped loose her hand, uttered a grunt of joy, and Miss Forsythe looked for her in vain. She was gone.
But late in the evening, when the great city turned out to breathe, and sat with opened shirt and loosened bodice on the dirty steps; when the hurdy-gurdy executed brassy scales and the lights flared in endless sparkling rows; when the trolley gongs at the corner pierced the air, and feet tapped cheerfully down the cool stone steps of the beer-shop, Ardelia, bare-footed and abandoned, nibbling at a section of bologna sausage, secure in the hope of an olive to come, cakewalked insolently with a band of little girls behind a severe policeman, mocking his stolid gait, to the delight of Old Dutchy, who beamed approvingly at her prancings.
“Ja, ja, you trow out your feet goot. Some day we pay to see you, no? You like to get back already?”