It takes ten times as long to tell this as it was in happening. It all came in an instant,—the change in her face, my going out to look for its cause, and the sight which, following her eyes, I saw,—a carriage coming swiftly down street, an elegant open barouche, in which sat a lady dressed in furs and velvet, and a wonderfully beautiful, golden-haired child. It was at the child that my little crossing-sweeper was looking, with a gaze which seemed to me to say,—
"So this, then, is childhood? This is what we ought to be when we are young; and how beautiful it is!"
She looked so intently that she forgot she was standing in the way, until the coachman shouted out to her, while he tried with all his strength to pull up his horses. She had looked one moment too long. Somehow the pole knocked her down, and the horses stepped over or on her, which I could not see; but in another moment they were drawn up a rod farther on, the lady was getting out of her carriage, and I myself was in the heart of the crowd which gathered at once, as usual. "Her arm is broken," one cried. "She has fainted," said another.
"Where is her home; can any one tell?" asked the lady in the furs and the velvet, standing now beside her.
A ragged little newsboy stepped from the ranks and pulled at some ghost of a cap. "Please, ma'am, I know," he said. "It's down here in Moonstone Court, with old Sally."
"Hey for Sally, in our alley," sang another little limb of evil, vexed that he had not been the one who knew the local habitation aforesaid.
Newsboy No. 1 was elevated to the coachman's box, and was desired to show the way. The lady got into the carriage herself, and received the injured and swooning girl, whom there were strong arms enough to lift,—the golden-haired child looked on with the compassion of an angel in her angelic face,—newsboy No. 2 hung on behind dexterously, making sure that his offence would pass unnoticed in the general mêlée, and the carriage rolled away toward Moonstone Court. Presently the golden-haired child spoke.
"What if they haven't any good place for her there, mamma?"
Mrs. Brierly, for that was the lady's name, bent forward and addressed newsboy No. 1, on the box.
"Is the old Sally you spoke of the girl's mother?"