“Why, jist out o’ there, hid under the stoop; an’ when yer go out, they’ll pounce onto yer.”
“O,” said Tiny, bravely, “’tain’t so! I don’t believe it. There wasn’t any there when I came in.”
“That’s because they was asleep, then,” said Ann Matilda. She had red, fiery red hair, was freckled, and had tusks for teeth. “They’ve just got woke up now; and they’re hungry, too.”
“So am I,” said Tiny. “Come, Bunch, let’s hurry past, and they can’t touch us; besides, you know no wild animals live about here nowadays.”
“O, but these ones are what comes up out of the sewer,” instructed the Midgetts.
Tiny’s courage began quickly to ooze away, and every bit of it deserted her when she and Bunch just put their noses outside of the door, and heard a most ferocious ya-o-o-ing from—well, they could not tell where.
Of the Midgett tribe, there was no one at home but the two girls. There was no Mr. Midgett, but there was a Mrs. Midgett, who was out washing. The children had seen her plunging her hard, red arms into the soap suds, over their mother’s wash-tub. She probably had a hard time managing a living. They were very poor. Sometimes the girls got employment as nurse girls or as extra help in the neighbors’ kitchens; but no one cared particularly to employ them, they were so vulgar, indolent, and slovenly. So they subsisted on the odd bits of broken victuals which they begged from door to door in baskets. Some people said they always gathered so much, that they must keep a boarding-house to get rid of the stuff; but I always regarded this as a fine bit of sarcasm. The Midgett mansion was a forbidden haunt of the children; but on this day Bunch had gone, for the last time, on special business of her own.
On Christmas last, Santa Claus had visited their home, and left for each a pretty doll of the regulation pattern, with blue eyes, and golden crimpy hair, dressed in billowy tarleton, and the height of fashion, the beauty of which dolls quite bewildered the unaccustomed eyes of the Midgetts when the children took their young ladyships for an airing. And so one day the Midgetts borrowed them for a minute, while the children neglected their responsibilities, leaving them on a door stone, while they crowded for a closer peep at the mysterious dancers in a hand-organ. From that day to this the whereabouts of the dollships has remained a solemn secret from the knowledge of all but the Midgetts. And it was to them Bunch had gone for a clew to her treasure.
“O,” said Keziah Jane, “while we was a-standin’ a-waitin’ for yous two to git away from the music, and give us a chance to peek in at the dancin’, the black feller what lives down the sewer come, and snatches ’em away; and we chases him like fury, and he run; and we never seed those ere dolls agin—nor him nor the dolls.”
“Sh! sh!” cautioned Ann Matilda. “Who’s that a-knockin’ at the door? Run quick in the bed-room, and hide under the bed. Maybe it’s that ere black feller, or those wildcats.”