“Do they have the whole of the house?”
She asked the question timidly, for the building looked very large, but she was utterly unused to city tenement life.
“The whole of that house?” Dick fairly shouted the sentence, and bent himself double with laughter. “Well, I should say not, mum! As near as I can calculate, about thirty-five different families have that pleasure. The whole of the house! Oh, my! What a greeny!” And he laughed again.
Mrs. Roberts exerted herself to laugh with him, albeit she was horror-stricken. Thirty-five families in one house! How could they be other than awful in their ways of living?
“I know almost nothing about great cities,” she said; “my home was in a much smaller one.”
This was the truth, but not the whole truth. Instinct kept this veritable lady, in the truest sense of the word, from explaining that she knew nothing about the abject poor, when she was speaking to one of their number. Just at this moment occurred a diversion; they had been making swift progress through the alley, Dick's long strides requiring effort on his companion's part to keep by his side, but just ahead the way was obstructed.
CHAPTER VII. — “WHAT A LITTLE SCHEMER IT IS.”
A riot! Not among men, which is sufficiently terrifying; nor yet among women, which is worse; but that most awful of all sights and sounds of sin,—a riot among the children. Swearing, spitting at one another, tearing one another's hair, scratching like tigers, growling like wild beasts, throwing garbage at one another! This was the sort of crowd upon which Mrs. Roberts, in her black silk walking-suit, with her velvet hat and seal furs, presently came. She grasped at Dick's arm in horror, but a feeling that was more than terror was taking her strength away.