“Ain’t I got enough junk without that?” she grumbled.  But the traffic of the Devil’s Own city was moving again and Great Taylor was moving with it.  She passed a corner where a clock in a drug store told her the time—­ten minutes of the hour.  “I got to get back,” she told herself, and heading her cart determinedly for an opening succeeded in crossing to the opposite side of the congested avenue.  There, a child, attracted by the jingling of the bells, ran out of a house with a bundle of rags tied in a torn blue apron.  The child placed the bundle on the scales and watched with solemn wide eyes.  Great Taylor again fumbled in the bag and extracted a coin which transformed the little girl into an India-rubber thing that bounced up and down on one foot at the side of the junk-cart.  “Grit never gave me only a penny a pound,” she cried.

“Grit is dead,” said Great Taylor.

“Dead!” echoed the child, clinging motionless to the wheel. “Grit is dead?” She turned suddenly and ran toward the house, calling:  “Mamma, poor old Grit is dead.”

Great Taylor put her weight against the handle of the cart.  She pushed on desperately.  Something had taken hold of her throat.  “What’s the matter with me?” she choked.  “Didn’t I know he was dead before this?  Didn’t I know it all along?  I ain’t going to cry over no man ... not in the street, anyway.”  She hurriedly shoved her cart around a corner into a less-congested thoroughfare and there a mammoth gilded clock at the edge of the sidewalk confronted her.  The long hand moved with a sardonic jerk and indicated the hour—­the hour of her appointment.  But Great Taylor turned her eyes away.  “Pushing a junk-cart ain’t so easy,” she said, and for a moment she stood there huddled over the handle; then, taking a long, deep breath, like Grit used to do, she straightened herself and sang out, clear and loud, above the noises of the cavernous street:  “Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags.”

The city that people call the Devil’s Own lost its sharp outline and melted into neutral tints, gray and blue and lavender, that blended like an old, old tapestry.  It was dusk.  Great Taylor strode slowly with laborious long strides, her breast rising and falling, her body lengthening against the load, her hands gripping the handle of the cart, freighted with rusty, twisted, and broken things.  At crossings she paused until the murmuring river of human beings divided to let her pass.  Night settled upon the high roofs and dropped its shadow into the streets and alleys, and the windows began to glow.  Light leaped out and streaked the sidewalks while at each corner it ran silently down from high globes like full moons and spattered over the curb into the gutter and out as far as the glistening car tracks.  She passed blocks solid with human beings and blocks without a human soul.  Cataracts of sound crashed down into the street now and again from passing elevated trains, and the noise, soon dissipated, left trembling