“How little you know!” said the blind girl, thinking aloud; “how lucky it is I found you! and O, dear, how I wish I could see!  You’ll slip away in spite of me.”

But Flyaway allowed herself to be drawn along, step by step, partly because she liked the “freckled dog,” and partly because she had not ceased being amused by the droll sight of a person walking with closed eyes.

“What’s the name of you, girl?”

“Maria.”

“Maria?  So was my mamma; her name was Maria, when she was a little girl.  O, look, there’s another boy; don’t you see him?  Up high, in that house.  Got a big box with a string to it.”

A very rough-looking boy was standing at a third-story window, lowering a bandbox by a clothes-line.  As Fly watched the box slowly coming down, the boy called out,—­

“Get in, little un, and I’ll give you a free ride.”

“O, no—­O, no; I don’t dass to.”

“Yes, yes; go in, lemons,” said the boy, choking with laughter, as he saw the child’s horror.  “If you don’t do it, by cracky, I’ll come down and fetch you.”

At this, Fly was frightened nearly out of her senses, and ran so fast that the dog could scarcely have kept up with her, even if he had not had a blind mistress pulling him back.

“O, where are you?” exclaimed Maria.  “Don’t run away from me,—­don’t!”

“He’s a-gon to kill me in two,” cried Flyaway, stopping for breath.’ “he’s a-gon to kill me in two-oo!”

“No, he isn’t, dear!  It’s only Izzy Paul He couldn’t catch you, if he tried.  He’s lame, and goes on crutches.”

“But he said a swear word,—­yes he, did,” sobbed the child, never doubting that a boy who could swear was capable of murder, though he had neither hands nor feet.

“Stop, now,” said Maria, clutching Fly as if she had been a spinning top.  “This is my house.  Mother, mother, here’s a little girl; catch her—­hold her—­keep her!”

“Me?  What should I catch a little girl for?” said Mrs. Brooks, a faded woman with a tired face, and a nose that moved up and down when she talked.  She had been standing at the door of their tumbledown tenement, looking for her daughter, and was surprised to see her bringing a strange child with her.  It was not often that well-dressed people wandered into that dirty alley.

“The poor little thing has got lost, mother.  Perhaps you can find out where she came from.  I didn’t ask her any questions; it was as much as I could do to keep up with her.”

Maria put her hand on her side.  Fast walking always tired her, for she was afraid every moment of falling.

They had to go down a flight of stairs to get into the house; and after they got there Fly looked around in dismay.

“I don’t want to stay in the stable,” she murmured.  Indeed it was not half as nice as the place where her father kept his horse.

“But this is where we have to live,” sighed Maria.