"What boy?"
"I expect it's the boy I used to be. I forget him most of the time, but nows and thens he speaks up and gives me to understand he's there all right. You see, lady, when I was a boy, there was a little gal—somewheres near where I lived, I expect; and she had—yes, she sure had hair that color, and eyes that same kind. And when you spoke just now, it all come back, and seemed like 'twas the boy tellin', not me in a present way of speakin'. I don't know as you see what I'm drivin' at, but I don't know as I can put it any plainer."
"What kind of boy were you?"
"Guttersnipe!"
"Where did you live?"
Pippin described the cellar as well as he could. It was no longer in existence, he had ascertained that. Where it had yawned and stunk, a model tenement now stood prim and cheerful.
The Matron looked grave. Her clear gaze pierced through and through the man, as if—his own homely simile—she would count the buttons on the back of his shirt.
"What references have you?" she asked presently.
"References?" Pippin looked vague.
"Yes! I don't know anything about you—except that you are certainly a good scissor-grinder!" she smiled, half relenting. "You want to know about one of our girls—about some one who might have been one of our girls—" she corrected herself hastily—"and you say you were a guttersnipe and her father was a crook. Young man, our girls have nothing to do with crooks or guttersnipes, you must understand that. Unless you can refer me to some one—" her pause was eloquent.