“Nobody.”
“What's your name?”
“None of your business.”
“Will you come along with me into the restaurant over there?”
“No.”
But presently he was induced to go, although he continued to answer her questions in the savage, distrustful manner of his class. They went into a cheap eating-house and saloon, through the “Ladies' Entrance,” and while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been “put” with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest in him, and with pretended reluctance he gave his promise to wash his face and hands and to call upon her that evening at the theatrical boarding-house on Twenty-seventh Street where she was living. Then she left him.
When he called, she took him to her room and induced him to allow her to comb his hair. A deal of persuasion was necessary to this. Then she took him out and bought him a cheap suit of clothes on the Bowery. A half-hour later he was standing with her in the wings at Miner's Variety Theatre. A man and woman were doing a song and dance upon the stage.
“Watch that man,” the actress said to the boy of the streets. “I want you to do that sort of an act with me one of these days.”
When he had thus received his first lesson, she led him back to the theatrical boarding-house, and in her room he showed her what ability he had picked up as a singer and dancer. She secured a room for him in the house, and she had the precaution to lock him in lest he should take fright at his novel change of surroundings and flee in the night. When she released him on the next morning she found him docile and cheerful.
She escorted him into the big dining-room to breakfast.