ed fiercely, as she saw Pinky, making
at the same time a movement toward the girl. "Get out o' here, or I'll
spile y'r pictur'!"

"Keep quiet, will you?" said Norah, putting her hand on the woman and
pushing her back as easily as if she had been a child. "Now come here,
Nell, and let me look at you."

Out of the far corner of the cellar into which Flanagan had thrown her
when she heard Norah's voice, and into the small circle of light made
by a single tallow candle, there crept slowly the figure of a child
literally clothed in rags. Norah reached out her hand to her as she came
up--there was a scared look on her pinched face--and drew her close to
the light.

"Gracious! your hand's like an ice-ball!" exclaimed Norah.

Pinky looked at the child, and grew faint at heart. She had large hazel
eyes, that gleamed with a singular lustre out of the suffering, grimed
and wasted little face, so pale and sad and pitiful that the sight of it
was enough to draw tears from any but the brutal and hardened.

"Are you sick?" asked Norah.

"No, she's not sick; she's only shamming," growled Flanagan.

"You shut up!" retorted Norah. "I wasn't speaking to you." Then she
repeated her question:

"Are you sick, Nell?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

Norah laid her hand on the child's head:

"Does it hurt here?"

"Oh yes! It hurts so I can't see good," answered Nell.

"It's all a lie! I know her; she's shamming."

"Oh no, Norah!" cried the child, a sudden hope blending with the fear in
her voice. "I ain't shamming at all. I fell down ever so many times in
the street, and 'most got run over. Oh dear! oh dear!" and she clung to
the woman with a gesture of despair piteous to see.

"I don't believe you are, Nell," said Norah, kindly. Then, to the woman,
"Now mind, Flanagan, Nell's sick; d'ye hear?"

The woman only uttered a defiant growl.

"She's not to be licked again to-night." Norah spoke as one having
authority.

"I wish ye'd be mindin' y'r own business, and not come interfarin' wid
me. She's my gal, and I've a right to lick her if I plaze."

"Maybe she is and maybe she isn't," retorted Norah.

"Who says she isn't my gal?" screamed the woman, firing up at this and
reaching out for Nell, who shrunk closer to Norah.

"Maybe she is and maybe she isn't," said the queen, quietly repeating
her last sentence; "and I think maybe she isn't. So take care and mind
what I say. Nell isn't to be licked any more to-night."