"With your cousin Juliana?"
"No, sir, not that; she is clean, and I—I wish I was. Won't you let me sleep on the floor?"
"You shall have a place to sleep to-night; and to-morrow, if your mother is willing, you shall come and live with your cousin Juliana, and be dressed as she is, and learn to sew; and when you get big enough"——
"Her mother will prostitute her, as she did her older sister to a miserable old pimp for ten dollars."
"Tom, Tom, what is that?"
"The truth, sir. Have I ever told you a lie since I have been in your house?"
"Well, well, Tom, take Madalina to the housekeeper, and give her somewhere to sleep to-night, and to-morrow morning you shall go to her mother and see what she will do."
"Lord, sir, I must go to-night. She will be off with her hook and basket, poking in the gutters after rags before the stars go to bed. These rag-pickers are early birds. I have known them travel four or five miles of a morning, to get to their own walk."
"Own walk. What is that?"
"All the city is divided up among them. Each must keep to his own walk. If one should trespass upon another, he would get a wet cloth over his mouth some night when he was asleep, and nobody would know or care how he died."