Chapter I: Alone in the World

IT was a very dismal old house, and it stood in a narrow alley in the great city. The doors were broken, and the windows were broken, and many of them stuffed with old garments to keep out the cold.

In one of the gloomiest rooms, a little girl, about seven years old, was sitting on a straw bed on the floor. The street lamps had just been lighted, and shone into the room and brightened it up a little. But Katy Hunter still sat with her face buried in the old quilt, crying bitterly and saying, "Oh, mamma, come back! Oh, don't leave me alone!"

Her dear mother had died two days before. They had just taken her away to lay her in the grave. Nobody had noticed the poor child, so she was left by herself.

When Katy was about four years old, she lost her father. They used to live in a pleasant village in New England, in a pretty little cottage. Mr. Hunter owned a small vessel that plied back and forth between the busy ports. They were a very happy little family. But in a wild storm the vessel was lost, and Katy's papa went down with it. Then Mrs. Hunter had to set herself to work in earnest, to earn a living for herself and baby. She struggled along for a time, not finding much to do, although she understood the dress-maker's trade.

At last, she heard that dress-makers were paid very high wages in the city. She was young and did not understand the world very well, and she thought if she might but get there, everything else would come easy. So as quickly as she could, she sold their little home, and bade good-bye to her native town. She had no relatives living, so there was no one to look to for help and advice.

We will not try to follow her all through the long, sad time, but she could not find the establishment that paid such high wages, and she found she must take very small pay or none. She managed at first, with the help of the little money she brought with her, to do very well, always hoping for better days; but the good days did not come to her. The times grew worse, the pay smaller, and she was obliged to leave the pleasant attic room where she lived, and go down to the worst part of the city, where rents were cheaper. But she found a room that was not quite so bad as some of them, where she hoped to keep her little girl from the swarms of bad children about them.

She worked beyond her strength and was taken sick. It was terrible to her to live in such a place, for she had been brought up in a tidy New England home. And as she lay on her bed burning with fever, she would groan and cry out, "Poor little Katy! Mamma will hurry and get well, then we will go away from this bad place. We'll go back to the green fields and sweet air."

Katy was a happy little thing, even in her dark, gloomy home, and sat for hours on her mother's bed, playing with her rag dolly or brushing her mother's hair, taking care of her, she said. Soon the dear Lord Jesus sent for the poor tired mother to come out of the dark into the light, to greener fields and sweeter air than she had ever dreamed of.

After the funeral, one of the neighbor women came in and found Katy asleep, worn out with crying. She took her up and carried her into her own room and put her in bed with her own children.

In the morning, when Katy awoke, she looked all about her in great surprise. She looked as if she did not belong to the same race as the Maloney children, with her fair face, and the short brown curls clustering about it, and the clear brown eyes that looked so sad now. The Maloneys awoke, too, and stared at her.

"Who be you, and where did you come from?" said Sally, a stout girl of ten.

"I know," said her sister Ann. "It's that little Hunter young one, that her mother has kept shut up in her room, for fear she should get a chance to speak to the like of us. Stuck up thing! I'm glad she is dead!"

By this time, Katy was crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Stop that noise!" roared the father, who had, even so early as this, got whisky enough to make him cross.

So Katy sat scared and trembling, and watched the ragged children, with clothes half on, with unwashed faces, and uncombed hair, stand around the table and snatch bits of bread and bones from each other.

They called this breakfast. The mother was off to a day's work. If she had let drink alone, she would have been an industrious woman. As it was, she did a day's work now and then, enough, as she said, "to keep a roof over their heads."

After a little, there came a knock, and Peter Hanks shuffled in to make a morning call. To have a little talk, he said.

With their old pipes in their mouths, making clouds of smoke in the room, they sat over the miserable fire, and smoked and drank, for John Maloney brought out a jug of whisky to entertain his visitor.

While old Peter smoked and drank and talked, he kept casting glances at Katy, sitting on the bed.

He was saying to himself something like this:

"I tell you what it is, she's a pretty little tyke! What bright eyes she's got. Now she wouldn't make a bad picture at the corner of the street. Guess she'd get the dimes. I'm bound to have that little gal for mine, to bring up. She is smart, too, I know she is. I declare she looks jest like an angel lit down amongst this Maloney pack. But I bet she'll do well in that business, and it's time I stopped work and took it a little easier."

Though when he began work, or when he took it anything but easy, it would have been hard to tell; although he did have a sign over his door which read—

PETER HANKS, SHOEMAKER.

If people had depended on him to make shoes for them, they would have been badly off indeed.

Taking out his pipe and knocking out the ashes, he said:

"See here, old fellow, give that 'ere young-un' to me. You have more mouths now than you can fill; give her to me, and I'll bring her up right."

"Yes, you're a fit one to do that job, ain't you? But take her along, it's little I care what becomes of her."

So when Peter got up to go, he went toward Katy and said: "Come, little gal, come along o' me."

At first, Katy drew back.

But he really looked kindly at her and said: "Come, come along with me and get some dinner."

Katy was very hungry; she had had no breakfast, so she slipped her hand in his, and trotted along by his side.

They passed through the alley and turned up a narrow street, stopped before a miserable-looking house, went down two or three steps, and opened the door of a cellar. Now, I suppose you will think of your mother's cellar—clean and dry, with cement floors and whitewashed walls, and clean shelves full of good things, and the fresh air passing through, and such a good, sweet smell in it that you never feel like hurrying out.

It was no such cellar as that. It was dark, and dirty, and damp, so dark that a lantern had to be hung up in the daytime, to make it light enough to see anything clearly. There was nothing in the room but an old table, a bed, a couple of chairs and a broken stove. There certainly was no appearance of the promised dinner; for Peter's wife, a stout, red-faced woman, was busy at the wash-tub, splashing the suds about in a most uncomfortable way.

Peter said:

"Here, Nancy, I've brought this little gal home to work for us." As he said this, he gave a sly wink.

Nancy knew what he meant, for they had often talked it over how it would be a good plan to get a child somewhere and train her up to beg for them. But Nancy was cross to-day, so she only said "Humph!" and went on with her work.

After awhile, she brought out a few old dishes and some broken bits of bread and meat, and putting them on the table announced that dinner was ready. Katy was far too hungry to be dainty, and she ate her part with a keen appetite.

After dinner, Peter went out, and his wife soon followed. Before she went out, she threw an old straw bed down on the floor of a little closet, and, putting an old quilt on it, told Katy there was her bed, and she could go to it as soon as she liked, for all she cared.

Katy was glad enough to be left alone, so that she might have a chance to cry, and think about "dear mamma." Her poor little heart was almost broken, and she said aloud many times:

"Oh, mamma! Mamma! Why didn't you take me with you? I can't stay here in this dreadful place. What shall I do?"

When she was tired out, she said her little prayer and went to her lonely bed.

The first sound Katy heard in the morning was the coarse voice of Nancy Hanks, saying:

"Come, you young one, turn out of that as quick as you can!"

Katy, trembling with fear and cold, put on her clothes. Her mother had trained her to habits of neatness, and when she was dressed, she began to look about for some means of washing her face and hands, and smoothing her hair. But finding none, she ventured to say, "Please will you tell me where the wash-basin is?"

"Get away with you! Wash-basin indeed! You needn't go to putting on airs of that kind, miss, I tell you. Let's see what you are good for to do errands. Take this pail and get a pint of whisky at the grocery, at the end of the street; and mind you don't drink any of it."

Katy opened her eyes in astonishment; she had never tasted whisky in all her life, and thought that none but bad people ever did. But she took the pail and did as she was told.

There was the same pack of rude, ragged children in the streets as usual. She managed to slip along, without much notice from them when she went. But as she was coming back, one of the largest of the rough boys caught hold of her, and said: "Hurrah! What has little Snippie got in her pail, I wonder? Something good, maybe."

Katy ran as swiftly as she could, but he overtook her, and, snatching the pail away, drank half of the contents.

"Oh! 'Do' let me have it; do 'give' it to me," begged Katy, but the bad boy passed it around among the others, till the whole was gone. Then they threw the pail on the ground, and ran off, yelling and hooting.

Katy picked up the empty pail and started on. But what should she do? She was afraid to go in without the whisky. She wandered up and down a long time in the cold, until she saw Mrs. Hanks with a very red and angry face, standing in the door looking for her.

As soon as she got up to her, she snatched the pail and shouted, "Where is it? Say, where is it?"

Poor Katy sobbed out the story. But Nancy seized hold of her arm, and brought her in with such violence that she fell headlong on the floor. But the angry woman jerked her up, and shook her so that she could scarcely breathe.

"I'll teach you," she said, as she brought down her heavy hand on Katy's shoulders; "I'll teach you to go and steal from me. You drank it yourself, you know you did, or sold it for something else, as likely as not."