e with a
bundle of rags tied in a torn blue apron. The child placed the bundle
on the scales and watched with solemn wide eyes. Great Taylor again
fumbled in the bag and extracted a coin which transformed the little
girl into an India-rubber thing that bounced up and down on one foot
at the side of the junk-cart. "Grit never gave me only a penny a
pound," she cried.

"Grit is dead," said Great Taylor.

"Dead!" echoed the child, clinging motionless to the wheel. "_Grit_ is
dead?" She turned suddenly and ran toward the house, calling: "Mamma,
poor old Grit is dead."

Great Taylor put her weight against the handle of the cart. She pushed
on desperately. Something had taken hold of her throat. "What's the
matter with me?" she choked. "Didn't I know he was dead before this?
Didn't I know it all along? I ain't going to cry over no man ... not
in the street, anyway." She hurriedly shoved her cart around a corner
into a less-congested thoroughfare and there a mammoth gilded clock at
the edge of the sidewalk confronted her. The long hand moved with a
sardonic jerk and indicated the hour--the hour of her appointment. But
Great Taylor turned her eyes away. "Pushing a junk-cart ain't so
easy," she said, and for a moment she stood there huddled over the
handle; then, taking a long, deep breath, like Grit used to do, she
straightened herself and sang out, clear and loud, above the noises of
the cavernous street: "Rags ... old iron ... bottles and ra-ags."

The city that people call the Devil's Own lost its sharp outline and
melted into neutral tints, gray and blue and lavender, that blended
like an old, old tapestry. It was dusk. Great Taylor strode slowly
with laborious long strides, her breast rising and falling, her body
lengthening against the load, her hands gripping the handle of the
cart, freighted with rusty, twisted, and broken things. At crossings
she paused until the murmuring river of human beings divided to let
her pass. Night settled upon the high roofs and dropped its shadow
into the streets and alleys, and the windows began to glow. Light
leaped out and streaked the sidewalks while at each corner it ran
silently down from high globes like full moons and spattered over the
curb into the gutter and out as far as the glistening car tracks. She
passed blocks solid with human beings and blocks without a human soul.
Cataracts of sound crashed down into the street now and again from
passing elevated trains, and the nois