“Can’t I study French too?”
“That would be a great joke for a common street girl to study French! You’ll be playing the piano next.”
“Why not?” asked Tom, undauntedly.
“Maybe your granny, as you call her, had a piano.”
“Perhaps she did,” said Tom; “but it was to the blacksmith’s to be mended, so I never saw it.”
Tom was not in the least sensitive on the subject of granny, and however severe reflections might be indulged in upon granny’s character and position, she bore them with equanimity, not feeling any particular interest in the old woman.
Still she did occasionally feel a degree of curiosity as to how granny was getting along in her absence. She enjoyed the thought that Mrs. Walsh, no longer being able to rely upon her, would be compelled to forage for herself.
“I wonder what she’ll do,” thought Tom. “She’s such a lazy old woman that I think she’ll go round beggin’. Work don’t agree with her constitution.”
It so happened that granny, though in her new vocation she made frequent excursions up town, had never fallen in with Tom. This was partly because Tom spent the hours from nine to two in school, and it was at this time that granny always went on her rounds. But one Saturday forenoon Tom was sent on an errand some half a mile distant. As she was passing through Eighteenth Street her attention was drawn to a tall, ill-dressed figure a few feet in advance of her. Though only her back was visible, Tom remembered something peculiar in granny’s walk.
“That’s granny,” soliloquized Tom, in excitement; “she’s out beggin’, I’ll bet a hat.”