"It isn't that," explained his guest, hastily; "you never had anything to spare before, and I was wondering how you afforded to give me such a lot now."
Patch wondered too; then he crumpled up the paper table-cloth, and flung it into the gutter. "I never wanted to give anything away before," he remarked; "but perhaps—if you couldn't get it anywhere else—I might give you a bit another time."
And presently in the dark a dirty hand stretched out and timidly stroked his sleeve.
Patch went home down the wet streets with his flute. He looked poor and ragged as ever, but he had at least taken the first step upward that night in finding out the possibility even for him of helping another.
Sarah Pitt.
LITTLE TOILERS OF THE NIGHT.
III.—YOUNG GIPSIES.
"D
o we work at night! yes, I b'lieve yer; and afore daylight too, leastways, as soon as ever there's light enough to see by. Not always we don't, but when the old man comes back, an' says we must do a spell of peggin' there ain't no time hardly to get our vittles, except perhaps a tater, or a bit o' bread and bacon; but that's ever so much better than it used to be when poor mother was alive, and she and me and Aunt Ann and Ben used to work the dolls and windmills, an' the fly-ketchers, an' the flyin' birds."
She was a tall thin girl, with a flat dirty face, that would have been pale, if it had not been burnt to a yellowish brown with the sun, till it was only a shade lighter than the old battered straw hat that had let a wisp or two of yellow hair through a great slit in the back just above the brim. She wore a tattered cotton frock that had nearly all the pattern washed out, which must have been a long time before, because it was so stained and worn, so thin that it would bear no more washing.