“Where ‘m I goin’ to find her?” he complained to himself.  He hung about a little until he saw the carriage emerge from the grounds and turn in the other direction, then he went straight down to the main street.  Just as he turned the corner he met a small woman, carefully dressed and frizzed, who stopped him.

“Is your mother at home, little boy?” she asked, in a nervous voice.  There were red spots on her thin cheeks; she was manifestly trembling.

The boy eyed her with a supercilious scorn and pity.  He characterized her in his own mind of extreme youth and brutal truth as an ugly old woman, and yet he noted the trembling and felt like reassuring her.  He took off his little cap.  “No, ma’am,” said he.  “Amy has gone to drive.”

“I wanted to see your mother,” said the woman, wonderingly.

“Amy is my mother,” replied the boy.

“Oh!” said the woman.

“They have all gone,” said Eddy.

“Then I shall have to call another time,” said the woman, with a mixture of ingratiation and despair.

The boy eyed her sharply.  “Say,” he said, “are you the dressmaker that made my sister Ina’s clothes for her to be married?”

“Yes, I be,” replied Madame Griggs.

“Then,” said Eddy, “I can tell you one thing, there isn’t any use for you to go to my house now to get any money.  I suppose you haven’t been paid.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Madame Griggs.  Then she loosened the flood-gates of her grievance upon the boy.  “No, I haven’t been paid,” said she, “and I’ve worked like a dog, and I’m owing for the things I bought in New York, and I’m owing my girls, and if I don’t get paid before long, I’m ruined, and that’s all there is to it.  I ’ain’t been paid, and it’s a month since your sister was married, and they’ll send out to collect the bills from the stores, if I don’t pay them.  It’s a cruel thing, and I don’t care if I do say it.”  The woman was flouncing along the street beside the boy, and she spoke in a loud, shrill voice.  “It’s a cruel thing,” she repeated.  “If I couldn’t pay for my wedding fix I’d never get married, before I’d go and cheat a poor dress-maker.  She’d ought to be ashamed of herself, and so had all your folks.  I don’t care if I do say it.  They are nuthin’ but a pack of swindlers, that’s what they be.”

Suddenly the boy danced in front of the furious little woman, and stood there, barring her progress.  “They ain’t!” said he.

“They be.”

“They ain’t!  You can’t pay folks if you ’ain’t got any money.”

“You needn’t have the things, then,” sniffed Madame Griggs.

“My sister had to have the things to get married, didn’t she?  A girl can’t get married without the clothes.”

“Let her pay for ’em, then.”

“I’ll tell you what to do!” cried Eddy, looking at her with a sudden inspiration.  “You are in debt, ain’t you?”

“Yes, I be,” replied Madame Griggs, hopping nervously along by the boy’s side, poor little dressmaker, aping French gentility, holding her skirts high, with a disclosure of a papery silk petticoat and a meagre ankle.  Even in her distress she felt of her frizzes to see if they were in order after a breeze had struck her in the sharp, eager face.  “Yes, I be.”