e street. Not far; fifty feet away
he stopped short, looked back, hesitated a moment, then turned on his
track as fast as he had come. He brought up directly in front of me, a
picture a painter would have loved, ragamuffin that he was, with the
flowers held so tightly against his brown skin, scraped out with one foot
and made one of the funniest little bows.

"Thank you," he said. Then he was off. Down the street I saw squads of
children like himself running out to meet him. He darted past and through
them all, never stopping, but pointing back my way, and in a minute there
bore down upon me a crowd of little ones, running breathless with
desperate entreaty: "Oh, mister! give _me_ a flower." Hot tears of grief
and envy--human passions are much the same in rags and in silks--fell when
they saw I had no more. But by that time Tony was safe.

And where did he run so fast? For whom did he shield the "posy" so
eagerly, so faithfully, that ragged little wretch that was all mud and
patches? I found out afterward when I met him giving his sister a ride in
a dismantled tomato-crate, likely enough "hooked" at the grocer's. It was
for his mother. In the dark hovel he called home, to the level of which
all it sheltered had long since sunk through the brutal indifference of a
drunken father, my lady's pinks blossomed, and, long after they were
withered and yellow, still stood in their cracked jar, visible token of
something that had entered Tony's life and tenement with sweetening touch
that day for the first time. Alas! for the last, too, perhaps. I saw Tony
off and on for a while and then he was as suddenly lost as he was found,
with all that belonged to him. Moved away--put out, probably--and, except
the assurance that they were still somewhere in Mott Street, even the
saloon could give me no clue to them.

I gained Tony's confidence, almost, in the time I knew him. There was a
little misunderstanding between us that had still left a trace of
embarrassment when Tony disappeared. It was when I asked him one day,
while we were not yet "solid," if he ever went to school. He said
"sometimes," and backed off. I am afraid Tony lied that time. The evidence
was against him. It was different with little Katie, my nine-year-old
housekeeper of the sober look. Her I met in the Fifty-second Street
Industrial School, where she picked up such crumbs of learning as were for
her in the intervals of her housework. The serious responsibilities of