“I’ll take him up to the doctor’s now,” she said to Bird, without vouchsafing any remarks upon the improved appearance of the kitchen, though she saw it all. “You can come along with me if you like, or you can stop here and look about and rest yourself a bit. There’s plenty of passing to be seen from the front room.”
Bird said she thought she would rather stay at home.
“Mind, now, and lock the inside hall door as soon as we’ve gone and don’t let anybody in, for, in spite of the catch on the door below, there’s always pedlers and one thing and another pushing up.”
After Mrs. O’More had left, Bird went through into the sitting room. Seating herself by the window with her arms on the sill, she looked down into the street. It was an intensely hot day in spite of a breeze that blew from the East River; down by the pavement the mercury was climbing up into the nineties—summer had come with a jump. Could it be only a week ago that she had been picking long-stemmed, purple violets by the brook beyond the wood lot at Laurelville? Was it only day before yesterday that Lammy had brought her the red peonies, and they had walked up the hill road together?
She had stayed by the window for some time, perhaps half an hour, watching the horses that were led out from the stable to be cooled by spray from the hose attached to the hydrant in front, when a slight noise in the kitchen caused her to turn. The light from the window opening on the fire-escape was darkened, and a man’s figure showed for a second in outline against the sky and then swung noiselessly into the kitchen.
Bird’s first impulse was to scream, but, checking it, she shrank trembling behind a tall rocking-chair and watched. The man glanced about the kitchen and came directly through to the room where her uncle and aunt slept. It did not seem to occur to him that there was anybody at home, though Bird did not think of this until afterward.
Pausing before the bureau, he opened the upper drawer, and, after passing his hand rapidly through the clothing it contained, drew out a long wallet, which Bird recognized as the one from which her aunt had taken some money before going to the doctor’s. Without thinking of the result or counting the cost, she rushed forward and caught the wallet tight in both hands, crying, “You mustn’t take it, you shan’t; for it’s the money to pay for mending poor Billy’s leg.”
The man, taken utterly by surprise, fell back, but only for a moment, and, muttering a string of such words as Bird had never before heard, seized her by the shoulder with one hand while he tried to wrench the pocket-book from her with the other; but, strong as he was, this took several minutes, for Bird hung on desperately, clinging to his arm after he had secured the wallet, until finally he picked her up bodily and threw her on to the bed, and before she could recover herself, locked the door into the sitting room, and, taking out the key, did the same to the door into the boys’ room, through which he retreated, leaving her a prisoner, for the window into the air-shaft was high out of reach.