My heart was shivering with acid bitterness.
"Never me, never me!" and the misery of many loveless years rang as a wail in my soul.
Just as the woman, who had spoken, was about to hand a dime to my intended scapegoat, her companion happened to turn and see me.
"Oh, just look at the other poor fellow."
The exclamation was justified. I was a sight. However, my dilapidated clothes and scratched face owed their pitiful condition to much "scrapping" and not to deprivations.
Again she spoke.
"Here, poor boy, here is a penny for you."
With a light pat on my grimy cheek and one of the sunniest smiles ever shed on me, she was gone before I could realize what had happened. There, penny in hand, I stood, dreaming and stroking the cheek she had touched, and asking myself why she had done so.
Somehow, I felt that, were she to come back, I could just have said to her: "Say, lady, I ain't got much to give, but I'll give you all me poipers, and me pennies, and me knife, if you'll only say and do that over again."
The "cherub" also was a gainer by this little touch of nature. I forgot to kick and abuse him that night.