“Say, yehs makes me tired. See?
What deh hell deh yeh wanna tag aroun’ atter
me fer? Yeh’ll git me inteh trouble wid
deh ol’ man an’ dey’ll be hell teh
pay! If he sees a woman roun’ here he’ll
go crazy an’ I’ll lose me job! See?
Yer brudder come in here an’ raised hell an’
deh ol’ man hada put up fer it! An’
now I’m done! See? I’m done.”
The girl’s eyes stared into his face.
“Pete, don’t yeh remem—”
“Oh, hell,” interrupted Pete, anticipating.
The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself.
She was apparently bewildered and could not find
speech. Finally she asked in a low voice:
“But where kin I go?”
The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of
endurance. It was a direct attempt to give him
some responsibility in a matter that did not concern
him. In his indignation he volunteered information.
“Oh, go teh hell,” cried he. He
slammed the door furiously and returned, with an air
of relief, to his respectability.
Maggie went away.
She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She
stopped once and asked aloud a question of herself:
“Who?”
A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously
took the questioning word as intended for him.
“Eh? What? Who? Nobody!
I didn’t say anything,” he laughingly
said, and continued his way.
Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such
apparent aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating
eyes. She quickened her step, frightened.
As a protection, she adopted a demeanor of intentness
as if going somewhere.
After a time she left rattling avenues and passed
between rows of houses with sternness and stolidity
stamped upon their features. She hung her head
for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.
Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk
hat and a chaste black coat, whose decorous row of
buttons reached from his chin to his knees.
The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she decided
to approach this man.
His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence
and kind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive
movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous
side-step. He did not risk it to save a soul.
For how was he to know that there was a soul before
him that needed saving?
Upon a wet evening, several months after the last
chapter, two interminable rows of cars, pulled by
slipping horses, jangled along a prominent side-street.
A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers, clattered
to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly,
shed a blurred radiance. A flower dealer, his
feet tapping impatiently, his nose and his wares glistening
with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses and
chrysanthemums. Two or three theatres emptied
a crowd upon the storm-swept pavements. Men
pulled their hats over their eyebrows and raised their
collars to their ears. Women shrugged impatient
shoulders in their warm cloaks and stopped to arrange
their skirts for a walk through the storm. People
having been comparatively silent for two hours burst
into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling
from the glowings of the stage.
