"Nan was spirited, an' she screamed an' fought, but blows soon hushed her. She remembered, she's told me. She didn't know where she'd come from, but she knew it was clean an' decent, an' she wouldn't eat till hunger made her. Then there was a long time she came up with three or four that made a kind of a livin' pickin' pockets an' a turn now an' then as newsboys, or beggin' cold victuals an' pickin' up any light thing they could see if they were let in. Nan changed hands a dozen times, an' she never would have known where she come from if Charley Calkins hadn't kept half an eye to her. He was six years older, an' nobody knew who he belonged to; an' he an' Nan picked rags together, an' whatever trick he knew he taught her. They cropped her hair, an' dirt hid all the prettiness there was, but by ten she'd learned enough to get any bit of finery she could, an' to fight 'em off when they wanted to cut her hair still. She'd dance an' sing to any hand-organ that come along; an' that was where I saw her first—when she was twelve, I should think—with a lot o' men an' boys standin' round, an' she dancin' an' singin' till the very monkey on the organ danced too. I was in a house on Cherry street then, with some girls that played at a variety theatre on the Bowery, an' Nan by this time was so tall they'd made her a waiter-girl in one of the beer-shops. It was there the theatre-man saw her one day goin' down to the ferry. He thought she was older, for she never let on, an' she was tall as she ever was, an' her hair floatin' back the way she would always have it. She could read. She'd been to school one term, because she would, an' she had a way with her that you'd think she was twenty. So it didn't take long. The variety-man said he'd make her fortune, an' she thought he would; an' next day she come an' told me she had agreed for three years.
"She didn't know there was work in it, but she soon found there was just as much drudgery as in the rag-pickin' or a beer-shop. But she had an ambition. She said she'd started here, an' she would stay an' learn everything there was, but she believed she should be an actress in the Old Bowery yet. That seemed a great thing to me in those days, an' I looked at her an' wondered if she knew enough, an' if she'd speak to us when she got there. She was so silent sometimes that it daunted us, an' then she'd have spells of bein' wilder than the wildest; but she said straight enough, 'I'm not goin' to stay down in this hole: I'm goin' to be rich an' a lady; an' you'll see it.'
"The time came when she did get to the Old Bowery, an' the manager glad to have her too. The variety-man swore he'd kill her for leavin', for she drew at the last bigger houses than he ever had again. How she learned it all you couldn't tell, but the night we all turned out to see her in The Rover's Bride you'd have said yourself she was wonderful—painted of course, and fixed off, but a voice that made you cry, an' a way just as natural as if she believed every word she said. An' when she came out the third time, after such a stampin' an' callin' as you never heard, with her eyes shinin' an' such a smile, I cried with all my might.
"It was the very next day. Charley Calkins was bar-tender in a saloon, but getting off whenever he could to see Nan act. That was another thing. She wouldn't take any fancy name, but was Nan Evans straight through—on the bills an' everywhere—an' every one she'd grown up with went to see her, an' felt sort of proud to think she belonged to the Fourth Ward. An' a strange thing was, that, though so many were after her, she never seemed to care for anybody but this Charley, that had knocked her round himself, though he wouldn't let anybody else.
"Well, the old woman that had taken her first was dyin'. She was Charley's aunt, an' so she sent for him, for want of any other relation, an' told him she'd a little money for him, an' was a mind to give a little to Nan. Charley said, 'All right!' He knew she most likely had a good bit, for they often do, but then he said, 'You've always kept to yourself where you got Nan, an' I'm a mind to know.'—'Simpson's, up the Bowery,' she said; an' that was the very last word she ever spoke. She left thirteen hundred dollars in the Bowery Bank, an' it seemed as if there were odd sums in every bunch of rags in the room, so that Charley had enough to set him up pretty well. An' it didn't take him long after he started his own saloon near the theatre to find out, among all the Simpsons, the woman that had had Nan. She had her store still, an' a young woman to help her, an' she cried a little when Charley told her. But she was a member of the Mott Street Church, an' when she said, 'Where is she now? and why don't she come herself?' an' Charley said, 'She couldn't, because rehearsal's going on,' she looked at him.
"'Re-what?' says she.
"'Re-hearsal: she's an actress,' says he; an' she shut her eyes up as if the sight of him after such words was poison.
"'I want nothing to do with her,' says she. 'I've had my fill of sorrow an' trouble from wickedness. You can go, an' say no more.'
"This didn't suit Charley, for he knew how Nan kept herself sort of respectable even when she was with the worst, an' he was bound to find out all he could.
"Well, he hung on an' asked questions till he'd found out all there was, an' that was little, as you know. But Nan had wondered many a time where she came from, an' if she'd ever belonged to anybody, an' he wanted to be the first one to tell her. He scared the old lady, for he wasn't long from the Island, where he'd been sent up for assault an' battery, an', do what you would to him, clothes nor nothin' could ever make him look like anything but a rough. But he was bound to know, for he thought there might be money belonging to her or folks that would do for her. There wasn't a soul, though, that he could find out, an' the next thing was to go to Nan an' tell her about it. They'd have been wiser to have waited a day, till the old lady'd a chance to quiet down and think it all over; but he went straight to Nan an' told her he'd found some of her folks; an' she, without a word, put on her hat an' went with him. If she'd been alone it might have been better, for Charley seemed worse than he was. The old lady was in the room back of the shop, neat as a pin, an' Nan looked as if she was looking through everything to see if she could remember.