“Now,” I went on, “you’re no doubt cold and hungry. Let me take you to the coffee-stall on the Embankment and give you some supper. Then, according to the custom of the situation, you may tell me the sad story of your life. In the meantime, as we walk there, let’s hear how you fixed O’Flather.”
“It is true, what I tell you, Monsieur; he’s very, very bad man. He ’ave said the things disgusting to me, and he try to make me have dinner wiz heem many hevenings, but I say: No! No! Because, truly, I have ’orror for such mans. Den last night he tell me if I don’ come wiz heem, he don’ want me some more. He refuse pay me my money, and the lady where I rest tell me: ‘You don’t come back some more wiz no money.’ So what I must do? I have no ’ome, and just one sheeling of money. Ah, no! It was not interesting for me, truly.”
She shook her head with all the painful resignation of the poor.
“Well, I am desperate. I sink it is all finish for me, I must drink of the gran’ cup at last. That make me sad, because I have fight so long. But there! it is the life, is it not? Then I sink I have one gran’ revenge. I buy wiz my sheeling dat powdaire, and I go to the exposition. There was only the Japonaise girl, and she leave me wiz the troupe. They lie on their backs and they wait for dejeuner. Well, I geeve them such as I don’ sink they want eat ever again. Oh, I ’ate them so, and I ’ate heem so, and so I keel them every one wiz that powdaire, till zere legs don’ wave some more. Even ze wild ones, they don’ jump some more now.”
“Poor Bathsheba!”
“Then when I finish keel the last one the Japonaise girl come and scream for the patron, and I run like wind. But I know he fetch everywhere for me, and when he find me he keel me too. Anyway, I was tire, and I dispair, so I sink I throw myself in the water. There!”
“Well, you must swear you won’t do it again.”
“Yes, I swear on the head of my fazzaire, I won’t do it again.”
“And now for that coffee, coffee and sandwiches—ham sandwiches.”
She ate and drank eagerly, yet always with that furtive, hunted look, as if she expected to see the huge bull-dog face of O’Flather with its mane of brindled hair come snarling out of the gloom. I saw, too, that she was regarding me with great interest and curiosity, indeed with a certain maternal and protecting air, odd in one so childish and clinging herself. Once, seeing that I shivered a little, she turned up the collar of my coat and buttoned it. In spite of the mothering gentleness of the act I might have thought it a little “forward,” had I not remembered that in her eyes we were comrades in misfortune.