here. Some one touched her. It
was a girl younger than herself, who stood glaring at the window,
shivering in her ragged clothing; her eyes looked unnaturally large out
of her sharp, pinched face, daubed with tears and dirt.

'Look a' thar!' she cried eagerly, catching Jane's arm, 'see _them_! Why
ben't them mine? Why ben't I in thar, a buyin' o' them? I ort to ride,
ortn't I? Why ben't I got nice things on, like a' them thar? Pinchin'
Dave's got my dress for three shillin' to-night--the last un I been a
savin'; must ha' some drink, so't I'd be forgettin'--to-night, to-night,
ye see, I say--hoh!'

Giving a wild laugh, the girl ran off. A man inside was looking angrily
through the window; so Jane turned from the thoroughfare, and finally
struck into the road by which she came. The street lamps had given way
to the moon. The flats adjoining the city were all white except marshy
spots; passing two tall buildings, that made a sort of gateway, the
country spread to the sky unbroken, except where rows of dreary houses,
shadowy without the twinkle of a light, stood on some new land; this was
not the fashionable road, and it was empty. How pure and cool it was! In
the city, there was straggling moonlight, darkened by the brick walls,
but no moon; out here, the moon had just broken from a bank of cloud low
down, piled on a bank of snow, all looking snowy and alike, the horizon
line being hardly distinguishable; the light poured from the edge in a
shining flood, and rippled without a sound over the crisp, crusted
snow--all of one kin, cold, sparkling, desolate.

Jane noted nothing of this; she walked dizzily along the road. Only one
day since morning, after living a whole lifetime in that! She scooped up
a handful of snow, and rubbed it furiously into her face and eyes, they
burned so; her eyes were dry, melting the snow without feeling wet any.
Clear back in the morning, Margery Eames met her; then the day dragged
along as if it never would go, and she ate nothing but the tears she
swallowed; going down those steps, through that dreadful door, waiting
on those tables--the evening, till Will Prescott came in. She had wanted
so to have what others had, to study, to paint--such things as she had
seen, and she couldn't make a stroke! to learn to sing, as she had heard
them sing in the churches; to see Germany, that her mother had told her
about; she wanted to be loved--not like father and Nobby, but another
way too; she had a righ