you to mammy," said the woman.
She looked quickly up the alley, no one in sight. No one in the crowded
street noticed her. She stooped, raised the child in her arms, wrapped
a shawl round her, and walked swiftly away. And that evening, when
Maggie came to fetch her little lass, she was not there; the only trace
of her was one small clog, half full of sand, on the door-step!

The woman with the tambourine hurried along, keeping the child's head
covered with her shawl, at her heels a dirty-white poodle followed
closely. The street was bustling and crowded, for it was past twelve
o'clock, and the workpeople were streaming out of the factories to go to
their dinners. If Maggie had passed the woman, she would surely have
felt that the bundle in her arms was her own little lass, even if she
had not seen one small clogged foot escaping from under the shawl. Baby
was quiet now, except for a short gasping sob now and then, for she
thought she was being taken to mammy.

On and on went the woman through the town, past the railway-station, and
at last reached a lonely country road; by that time, lulled by the
rapid, even movement and the darkness, baby had forgotten her troubles,
and was fast asleep. She slept almost without stirring for a whole
hour, and then, feeling the light on her eyes, she blinked her long
lashes, rubbed them with her fists, and stretched out her fat legs.

Next she looked up into mammy's face, as she thought, expecting the
smile which always waited for her there; but it was not mammy's face, or
anything like it. They were sharp black eyes which were looking down at
her, and instead of the familiar checked shawl, there was a bright
yellow handkerchief over the woman's head, and dangling ornaments in her
ears. Baby turned up her lip in disgust, and looked round for someone
she knew, but everything was strange to her. The woman, in whose lap
she was lying, sat in a small donkey-cart, with two brown children and
some bundles tightly packed in round her; a dark man walked by the side
of it, and a dirty-white poodle ran at his heels. Discovering this
state of things baby lost no time, but burst at once into loud wailing
sobs and cries of "Mammy, mammy; me want mammy."

She cried so long and so bitterly that the woman, who had tried at first
to soothe her by coaxing and petting, lost patience, and shook her
roughly.

"Be still, little torment," she said, "or I'll throw you into the pond."

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