The snow fell thickly, the wind blew in great gusts, the day was a worse one than Flo had imagined, but she held on bravely, and Scamp trotted by her side, his fine spirits considerably sobered down, and a thick coating of snow on his back. Once or twice, it is true, he did look behind him piteously, as much as to say, “What fools we both are to leave our comfortable fireside,” but he flinched no more than his little mistress, and the two made slow but sure progress to Whitechapel Road.
They had gone a good way, when suddenly Flo remembered a famous short cut, which, if taken, would save them nearly a mile of road, and bring them out exactly opposite the Jew’s shop. It led through one of the most villainous streets in London, and the child forgot that in her respectable clothes she was no longer as safe as in the old rags.
She had gone through this street before—she would try it again to-day!
She plunged in boldly. How familiar the place looked! not perhaps this place,—she had only been here but once, and that was with her mother,—but the style of this place.
The bird-fanciers’ shops, the rags-and-bones’ shops, the gutter children, and gutter dogs, all painfully brought back her old wretched life. Her little heart swelled with gratitude at the thought of her present home and present mercies. She looked round with pity in her eyes at the wretched creatures who shuffled, some of them drunken, some starving, some in rags, past her.
She resolved that when she was a woman she would work hard, and earn money, and help them with money, and if not with money, with tender sympathy from herself, and loving messages from her Father in heaven.
She resolved that she, too, as well as Miss Mary, would be a sister of the poor.
She was walking along as fast as she could, thinking these thoughts, when a little girl came directly in her path, and addressed her in a piteous, drawling voice.
“I’m starving, pretty missy; give me a copper, in God’s name.”
Flo stopped, and looked at her; the child was pale and thin, and her teeth chattered in her head. A few months ago Flo had looked like this child, and none knew better than she what starvation meant. Besides the five shillings Mrs Jenks had given her to buy the necessary powder, she had sixpence of her own in her little purse; out of this sixpence she had meant to buy a bunch of early spring flowers for her dear Miss Mary’s birthday, but doubtless God meant her to give it to the starving child.