Chapter Eleven.
Maxey’s Young ’Un.
As Flo walked down the street, the wonderful news she had heard for the first time completely absorbed her mind, so much so that she forgot that Dick was a thief, that Dick and Jenks were both suffering from the penalty of their crime, that she was returning to her cellar alone, without even Scamp to keep her company. The news she had heard was so great, so intensely interesting in its freshness and newness, that she could think of nothing else.
She walked down, as her wont was, several by-streets, and took several short cuts, and found herself more than once in parts of the town where no respectable person was ever seen.
The gutter children working at their several wretched trades called after her as she passed, one addressing her as “old bonnet,” another asking how much she wanted a-piece for the flowers that dangled so ludicrously on her forehead.
And being a timid child, and, London bred as she was, sensitive to ridicule, she walked on faster and faster, really anxious to find any quiet place where she could sit down and think. At last, as she was passing a more open piece of ground, where a group of boys were playing pitch-and-toss, they, noticing her quickened movements, and rather frightened face, made a rush at her, and Flo, losing all presence of mind, began to run.
Little chance would she have had against her tormentors, had not just then a tall policeman appeared in sight, whereupon they considered it more prudent to give up their chase, and return to their interrupted amusements.
Poor Flo, however, still believing them to be at her heels, ran faster than ever down a narrow lane to her right, turned sharp round a corner, when suddenly her foot tripped against a cellar grating, the grating, insecurely fastened, gave way, and the child, her fall partly broken by a ladder which stood against the grating, found herself bruised, stunned, almost unconscious, on the ground several feet below the street.
For some moments she lay quiet, not in pain, and not quite insensible, but too much frightened and shaken to be capable of movement.
Then a sound within a foot or two of her caused her heart to leap with fresh fear. She sat up and listened intently.