“What’s the answer?” some one called from the fringe.
“A drunk,” came a voice from within, “plain drunk.” The police arrived just then, and cleared a way; through the rift they made, she saw them lift—Billy Gray, her father. 54
In the limpness and horror of this, her first crisis, she did nothing, said nothing; only stood there. Presently, she was aware that a workman in soiled overalls had joined the policemen.
“Now that’s all right,” he was saying, “he’s only dead to the world, making no trouble for nobody. He works for The Whale up above; what’s the good to pinch him?” “The Whale?” asked one of the policemen; and hesitated on the word. In quick decision, then, he whirled upon the crowd, pushed it back, cleared a space. The other policeman and the man in the soiled overalls—he was foreman of The Whale—picked up Billy Gray, who was turning and mumbling feebly, and started to carry him upstairs. A sudden impulse of her limbs, an instinct independent of her will, drew her toward them. The policeman, clearing away the crowd, laid hand upon her.
“You’ll have to get back little girl!” he said.
She looked him in the eye; the sudden abandonment to her shame seemed to lift and to exalt her; afterward, shuddering over that day, she still remembered a certain perverse pleasure in this moment. And she spoke loud, so loud that all the crowd might hear. 55
“He is my father!”
The policeman gave way; she hurried up the stairs. The bearers of Billy Gray were resting on the top of the first flight. They had braced him up against the banisters and were trying to rub sense back into him. She addressed herself straight to the foreman.
“Does this happen often?” she asked.
A good natured and communicative person, he was also enough touched by his importance as Good Samaritan to answer the question of a stray little girl.