as simply dressed, though with the New York instinct for
clothes. Their having stopped there seemed to stay her involuntarily,
and after a glance in the direction of their gaze she asked the
daughter:

"Is she sick, do you think?"

"We don't know what's the matter. But she oughtn't to stay there."

Something velvety in the girl's voice had made its racial quality
sensible to the ear; as she went up to the crouching woman and bent
forward over her and then turned to them, a street lamp threw its
light on her face, and they saw that she was a light shade of colored
girl.

"She seems to be sleeping."

"Perhaps," the son began, "she's not quite--" But he did not go on.

The girl looked round at the others and suggested, "She must be
somebody's mother!"

The others all felt abashed in their several sorts and degrees, but in
their several sorts and degrees they all decided that there was
something romantic, sentimental, theatrical in the girl's words, like
something out of some cheap story-paper story.

The father wondered if that kind of thing was current among that kind
of people. He had a sort of esthetic pleasure in the character and
condition expressed by the words.

"Well, yes," he said, "if she has children, or has had." The girl
looked at him uncertainly, and then he added, "But, of course--"

The son went up to the woman again, and asked: "Aren't you well? Can
we do anything for you? It won't do to stay here, you know." The woman
only made a low murmur, and he said to his sister, "Suppose we get her
up."

His sister did not come forward promptly, and the colored girl said,
"I'll help you."

She took one arm of the woman and the son took the other, and they
lifted her, without her connivance, to her feet and kept her on them.
Then they walked her down the steps. On the level below she showed
taller than either of them; she was bundled up in different incoherent
wraps; her head was muffled, and she wore a battered bonnet at an
involuntary slant.

"I don't know exactly what we shall do with her," the son said.

"We ought to get her home somehow," the daughter said.

The father proposed nothing, but the colored girl said, "If we keep
walking her along, we'll come to a policeman and we can--"

A hoarse rumble of protest came from the muffled head of the woman,
and the girl put her ear closer. "Want to go home? Well, the policeman
will take you. We don't know where you live, and we haven't the time."