dust and drifting
ashes, tossed her fairly off her feet, tore from her grip the
threadbare shawl she clutched at her throat, and set her down at the
saloon door breathless and half smothered. She had just time to dodge
through the storm-doors before another whirlwind swept whistling down
the street.

"My, but isn't it cold?" she said, as she shook the dust out of her
shawl and set the pitcher down on the bar. "Gimme a pint," laying down
a few pennies that had been wrapped in a corner of the shawl, "and
mamma says make it good and full."

"All'us the way with youse kids--want a barrel when yees pays fer a
pint," growled the bartender. "There, run along, and don't ye hang
around that stove no more. We ain't a steam-heatin' the block fer
nothin'."

The little girl clutched her shawl and the pitcher, and slipped out
into the street where the wind lay in ambush and promptly bore down on
her in pillars of whirling dust as soon as she appeared. But the sun
that pitied her bare feet and little frozen hands played a trick on
old Boreas--it showed her a way between the pillars, and only just her
skirt was caught by one and whirled over her head as she dodged into
her alley. It peeped after her halfway down its dark depths, where it
seemed colder even than in the bleak street, but there it had to leave
her.

It did not see her dive through the doorless opening into a hall where
no sun-ray had ever entered. It could not have found its way in there
had it tried. But up the narrow, squeaking stairs the girl with the
pitcher was climbing. Up one flight of stairs, over a knot of
children, half babies, pitching pennies on the landing, over wash-tubs
and bedsteads that encumbered the next--house-cleaning going on in
that "flat"; that is to say, the surplus of bugs was being turned out
with petroleum and a feather--up still another, past a half-open door
through which came the noise of brawling and curses. She dodged and
quickened her step a little until she stood panting before a door on
the fourth landing that opened readily as she pushed it with her bare
foot.

A room almost devoid of stick or rag one might dignify with the name
of furniture. Two chairs, one with a broken back, the other on three
legs, beside a rickety table that stood upright only by leaning
against the wall. On the unwashed floor a heap of straw covered with
dirty bedtick for a bed; a foul-smelling slop-pail in the middle of
the room; a crazy stove, and back