“May I go out with you?” she asked in a voice of childish sweetness.
“Certainly!” he answered “Please open the door for me; my hands are full.”
She tried, in perfect good faith, to do as he bade her; and the men watched, between amusement and admiration, those tiny rosy hands that pulled ineffectually at iron bar and nail-studded oaken door.
“I can’t make it move,” she said at length; and, looking about, perceived that they were laughing at her.
They went out on to the platform, and the door was closed behind them.
“Now stand close to me while I ring the bell, and watch the men file in, then we will go down to the prison,” the deputy said.
At the second bell, the convicts marched slowly out of the different shops, joined in the yard, and passed by, on their way to the prison, the stairs at the head of which stood the deputy and Minnie Raynor.
The child looked in wonder at that long line of silent men, who walked so close together, with interlocked steps, and never raised their faces. There was something in it that provoked her to mischief. Sorrow and sin she knew nothing of, and she had never seen in those about her a gravity which her smiles could not banish. Why should she not be a sunbeam to this cloud also?
There was a flit of white drapery at the deputy’s side, and a toss of yellow-flaxen hair.
“Come back, and wait for me,” he said hastily, his eyes fixed on the advancing line.