klessly out over the sill.

"It's a grind-organ man!" cried Elsie, "and he's got a monkey."

"I wonder how Dago would act if he were to see one of his own family,"
said Phil. "Come on, let's take him down and see."

He grabbed me up excitedly, regardless of the fact that I had not
finished my breakfast, and was still clinging to a half-eaten banana.
Tucking me under his arm, he went clattering down the steep attic
stairs, calling Elsie to follow. Running across the upper hall, he
slid down the banister of the next flight of stairs, that being the
quickest way to reach the front door and the street. Elsie was close
behind. She slid down the banister after him, her chubby legs held
stiffly out at each side, and the buttons on her jacket making a long
zigzag scratch under her, as she shot down the dark, polished rail.

A crowd of children had stopped on the curbstone in front of the
house, shivering a little in the pale autumn sunshine, but laughing
and pushing each other as they gathered closer around the man with the
hand-organ. As the wheezy notes were ground out, the man unwound the
rope that was coiled around his wrist, and bade the monkey at the
other end of it step out and dance.

"Come on, Dago! Come shake hands with the other monkey!" the children
cried. But I shrank back as far as possible, clinging to Phil's neck.
Not for a fortune would I have touched the miserable little animal
crouching on the organ. She might have been Matches's own sister, from
her resemblance to her. She belonged to the same species, I am sure,
and whenever they held me near her I shrieked and scolded so fiercely
that Phil finally said that I shouldn't be teased.

The man who held the string was a hard master. One could plainly see
that. He had a dark, cruel face, and he jerked the rope and swore at
her in Italian whenever she stopped dancing, which she did every few
seconds. He had started on his rounds early, in order to attract as
many children as possible before school-time, and I doubt if the poor
little thing had had any breakfast. She was sick besides. She would
dance a few steps and then cower down and tremble, and look at him so
appealingly, that only a brute could have had the heart to strike her
as he did. When he found that all his jerking was in vain, he gave her
several hard blows with the other end of the rope. At that she
staggered up and began to dance again, but it was not long until she
was huddled down on the curb