When had Nimble Dick lost an opportunity for fun at the expense of another? Here was a chance for a jolly lark! A woman scared to death because she was on Green alley. What would she think of Burk Street! Suppose he should send her there? Only three blocks away, through a lovelier part of the city than she had seen yet, he would venture! If the crowds here showed her too much attention, it would be worth something to see how she got through Burk Street.
“Oh, yes,” he said, briskly, “I can show you the way in a twinkling. You just go down this alley till you come to the big house on the corner, that has the windows all knocked out of it; then you turn and go down that street till you get to the third crossing; then turn again to the right, and you'll be on Fifth Avenue before you know it.”
Had Mrs. Roberts been looking at his face, she would have seen the wicked light dancing in his eyes over the thought that he had thus mapped out for her a walk through the very worst portion of the city, every step, of course, leading her further and further away from Fifth Avenue. The sights that she might see, and the mishaps which might occur to her,—a handsomely-dressed woman alone,—before she made her way through the horrors of these streets were too much even for Nimble Dick's imagination, who knew the locality well. He did not try to calculate them, but gave himself up to the enjoyment of imagining how long it would be before she would reach home if she followed his directions. “She won't see no swallowing serpents that I knows of,” he reflected, gleefully; “but I'll miss my reckoning if she don't see what will scare her worse than they would.”
But Mrs. Roberts was already “scared.” She felt her heart beating hard, and knew that her cheeks were aglow with excitement and vague terror. She was not used to walking such streets alone. She looked ahead at the way pointed out, and could see that the swarming life grew more turbid as far as her eye could reach. She felt that she could not brave its terrors unprotected. Suddenly she turned from looking down the alley, and her hand, a small, delicately-gloved hand, was again laid on Nimble Dick's arm; he could feel it trembling.
“I suppose I shall seem very foolish to you,” she said, gently; “but I am afraid to walk down there alone. Would you mind going along with me to protect me? I am only a woman, you know, and we are apt to be cowards.”
A very curious sensation came over Nimble Dick. He looked up the alley, and down the alley, and was glad that not one of the “fellows” was in sight. What was to become of his lark? But there was that hand still resting on his arm, with a persuasive touch in it; and he had never been appealed to for protection before,—never in his life! Was it possible that with him she would not be afraid? He turned and looked at her, searchingly, a scowl on his face,—no, she was not “shamming;” her eyes were full of anxious fear, and also of petition. Nimble Dick was amazed at himself and ashamed of himself; he did not know how to account for his sudden change of intention. But he suddenly turned in an opposite direction from the one which he had pointed out, and said, “Come on, then; I'll show you a shorter way,” and strode forward.
“Oh, thank you!” she said, relief and gratitude in her voice. “I shall be so much obliged to you for coming with me; I am quite bewildered; cannot decide which way I came, or anything about it. I was trying to find the house of a young man who has been hurt. A policeman told me that he lived on this street, and that his name is Calkins. I was thinking about him, and walked on without noticing, until I did not know where I was. Do you know anything of the young man?”
“You are too far down for him,” said Nimble Dick. “He's quality, and lives at the upper end of the alley. That's his house, away up there. He's hurt bad, they say; but I s'pose he'll get well. He's got a quality doctor,—a regular swell, who never come into these alleys before. He was going along when they brought Mark home, and he followed them in, and he come there again last night and this morning. I dunno what for, I'm sure. Mark Calkins can't pay no doctor's bills, if he does work regular, and pay more rent than the rest of folks.”
There was a curious mixture of complaint and satisfaction in Dick's tone. Mrs. Roberts gathered from it that the young man, Mark Calkins, in whom the policeman had tried to interest her, was superior to the rest of the miserable people in the alley, and that they resented it as an insult to themselves; but that, at the same time, the reflected honor of having a “swell” doctor come into their midst, attendant upon one who really belonged to their class, was very great. Could she possibly get a little influence over them by following up the injured young man, and giving what help was needful? She had hardly meant to call, though trying to find the house. Her method of reasoning had been something like this: “The policeman said he lived about two blocks from my poor Dirk's home. Since there has so recently been an accident, there may be something to mark the house,—a doctor passing in, possibly, or something that shall give me a landmark, and I can have a glimpse of the outside of one of the homes.” In her ignorance of life at that end of the social scale she did not know that a doctor passing in and out, even after an accident, was a sufficiently rare occurrence to make much more of a mark than she was looking for. So absorbed had she been over the boys belonging to her class that she had rather ignored the policeman's manifest hint to add this one to her list. Yet, was it possibly an answer to her prayer, an entering-wedge of some sort, that might open the way to influence?
“Who is the doctor?” she asked her guide, as the possibility of making an entrance through him occurred to her. “Do you know his name?”