About this time—that is, when Andy was two years old—Mrs. Burke took sick and died. She had been failing for several months, and unable to earn sufficient even to pay her rent. But for the help of neighbors and an occasional supply of food or fuel from some public charity, she would have starved. At her death Andy had no home and no one to care for him. One pitying neighbor after another would take him in at night, or let him share a meal with her children, but beyond this he was utterly cast out and friendless. It was summer-time when Mrs. Burke died, and the poor waif was spared for a time the suffering of cold.
Now and then a mother's heart would be touched, and after a half-reluctantly given supper and a place where he might sleep for the night would mend and wash his soiled clothes and dry them by the fire, ready for morning. The pleased look that she saw in his large, sad eyes—for they had grown wistful and sad since the only one he had known as a mother died—was always her reward, and something not to be put out of her memory. Many of the children took kindly to Andy, and often supplied him with food.
“Andy is so hungry, mamma; can't I take him something to eat?” rarely failed to bring the needed bread for the poor little cast-adrift. And if he was discovered now and then sound asleep in bed with some pitying child who had taken him in stealthily after dark, few were hard-hearted enough to push him into the street, or make him go down and sleep on the kitchen floor. Yet this was not unfrequently done. Poverty is sometimes very cruel, yet often tender and compassionate.
One day, a few months after Mrs. Burke's death, Andy, who was beginning to drift farther and farther away from the little street, yet always managing to get back into it as darkness came on, that he might lay his tired body in some friendly place, got lost in strange localities. He had wandered about for many hours, sitting now on some step or cellar-door or horse-block, watching the children at play and sometimes joining in their sports, when they would let him, with the spontaneous abandon of a puppy or a kitten, and now enjoying some street-show or attractive shop-window. There was nothing of the air of a lost child about him. For all that his manner betrayed, his home might have been in the nearest court or alley. So, he wandered along from street to street without attracting the special notice of any—a bare-headed, bare-footed, dirty, half-clad atom of humanity not three years old.
Hungry, tired and cold, for the summer was gone and mid-autumn had brought its chilly nights, Andy found himself, as darkness fell, in a vile, narrow court, among some children as forlorn and dirty as himself. It was Grubb's court—his old home—though in his memory there was of course no record of the place.
Too tired and hungry for play, Andy was sitting on the step of a wretched hovel, when the door opened and a woman called sharply the names of her two children. They answered a little way off. “Come in this minute, and get your suppers,” she called again, and turning back without noticing Andy, left the door open for her children. The poor cast-adrift looked in and saw light and food and comfort—a home that made him heartsick with longing, mean and disordered and miserable as it would have appeared to your eyes and mine, reader. The two children, coming at their mother's call, found him standing just on the threshold gazing in wistfully; and as they entered, he, drawn by their attraction, went in also. Then, turning toward her children, the mother saw Andy.
“Out of this!” she cried, in quick anger, raising her hand and moving hastily toward the child. “Off home with you!”
Andy might well be frightened at the terrible face and threatening words of this woman, and he was frightened. But he did not turn and fly, as she meant that he should. He had learned, young as he was, that if he were driven off by every rebuff, he would starve. It was only through importunity and perseverance that he lived. So he held his ground, his large, clear eyes fixed steadily on the woman's face as she advanced upon him. Something in those eyes and in the firmly-set mouth checked the woman's purpose if she had meant violence, but she thrust him out into the damp street, nevertheless, though not roughly, and shut the door against him.
Andy did not cry; poor little baby that he was, he had long since learned that for him crying did no good. It brought him nothing. Just across the street a door stood open. As a stray kitten creeps in through an open door, so crept he through this one, hoping for shelter and a place of rest.
“Who're you?” growled the rough but not unkindly voice of a man, coming from the darkness. At the same moment a light gleamed out from a match, and then the steadier flame of a candle lit up the small room, not more than eight or nine feet square, and containing little that could be called furniture. The floor was bare. In one corner were some old bits of carpet and a blanket. A small table, a couple of chairs with the backs broken off and a few pans and dishes made up the inventory of household goods.