She was never seen again. The river that has kept so many cruel secrets since London Town was London Town, and will go on a-keeping of ’em till want and poverty, misery and despair, are names that stand for nothing, took her and hid her out of sight.
Her story we heard long after. Let those that have never known temptation be gentle in their thoughts of her. Let them as has knowed it and overcome it, thank the Merciful Power as made ’em stronger to suffer and endure than Nick’s dead mother.
It seems all this while, as if I was neglecting Nan. The best of children always, and the most willing, and helpin’ me at the wash-tub, with all her little strength, as, even with my pattens on, she were hardly tall enough to reach it.
“I screamed for help and caught at her poor clothing.” (Page [31])
I have said my boy was handsome in his open-faced, bright-eyed, manly way, and so he were, but Nan was worth turning round to look at any day in the week. With her clear, brown skin and her big, grey eyes, that would change in colour according to her moods—an’ she had plenty of ’em!—with her bush of dancin’ black curls—as I could never damp out straight—an’ her red laughing mouth, and lively, high spirited ways, she was just Nick’s companion picture.
She was over-ruling and high in her ways with other children, taking the lead in their games in her hours of play-time, dividing whatever came to ’em in the way of sweets and such truck, and making no fuss about boxing the ears of any big boy as tried to rob ’em.
But she’d break off in the middle of hopscotch or honey-pots, if she saw Nick a-coming. (She was wonderfully fond of him and he of her, as I’ve said before.)
She had a high, shrill voice in singing, you could hear her above all the other children; and to see her dance, to the organs’ playing, was quite wonderful. It seems strange to me, looking back, that Nick should have none of that kind of talent in him.