Harvey J. O'Higgins

“ She did not look at him. She did not seem to see him there at all. She walked, stiffly uncertain, to the stool that the girl had left, and she sat down, crouching, before the stove. She put back the hair from her eyes. She said, in a low voice, as if from the middle of a long conversation: “Of course, I'm better. Who's to plan for Nellie if I don't get better? ... Doctors! Hah, doctors! What'd the doctors do for you? Buried you—yes, buried you! And left me to fight it out alone—me and Nellie!” ”

“ He was nineteen years old and his growing acquaintance with the world had already made him conscious of the stain of poverty and low breeding that marked him out to men whom he passed on the sidewalk and met in the street-cars. Of late, in an attempt to educate himself, he had attended night classes and studied during his otherwise idle moments behind Mrs. Moore's counter. He had become something of a dreamer, and a boy with ambitions for bettering himself in the world. His affection for Nellie had glowed vaguely in the background of those dreams ”

“ Who's to put her arms around you and go to sleep on your shoulder? There's nothing but the pain now to sleep with.” She rocked herself from side to side, hugging herself in her bony arms. “Hish, hish! Will you never stop tearing at me?”
She rose from her stool and began to pace up and down the little shop, swaying drunkenly and crooning a delirious lullaby to herself, her face distorted, her eyes glassed. Johnny, weak from nervous shock, in a cold fear of remaining shut in alone with a woman of such an aspect, wiped the perspiration from his face with his forearm and the back of his hand. ”

“ She'll never live to blame the mother that didn't keep her from marrying poverty.” She dropped her voice. “Oh, you're a good boy. I don't deny it—no! But you're not working for me. I know it. I see through you.” She chuckled, with a malicious and contemptuous mirth. “Work for her then. That's the way. Work for her! That's the boy. She'll not be back this Christmas. No, nor next, maybe. But she'll come back—some day—to say good-by to Judson Street. She'll be back with her young man. ... That's the boy, Johnny. You're a good boy, Johnny.” ”

“ He knew only that he would not return in the morning to sweep up the dirtied sawdust and sprinkle the floor with fresh; that he would not roll out the barrel of herrings, and set the baskets of vegetables on the benches outside the window, and fill the twine boxes, and hang the paper bags on their hooks under the shelves. And he had so long looked out on the world from Mrs. Moore's doorway—the routine of his work there had been, for so long, the routine of life itself—that he felt himself lost, unsettled, miserably outcast. ”

“ Him and his rag doll! No girl of mine ...” She sighed and grumbled indistinctly. Johnny laid his apron on the counter and put his straw cuffs beside it. And his face was tragical.
When she raised her voice again it was to complain. “Ah, well, you needn't be afraid of me, child. What'm I working here at all for, if it's not for you? God knows it's all that keeps me going.... Stop that crying. I didn't mean to frighten you. You're as soft as your father.”
She looked around her sightlessly, her head thrown back like the blind. “You're a hard one,” she muttered to herself in hoarse undertones. ”

“ Moore from a comfortable home up town; and certainly there were in her manner, in her speech, in the determined vigor of her mind traces of a better origin than her husband's. She was alone, even in the crowded life of Judson Street; and she lay alone in her room, at bay, fighting the malady that was sapping the strength of her body but still failing to weaken her will.
“What for is it all, at all?” Mrs. Curry had chafed. “Why don't she give up to it? Does she want to die in her boots?” And Johnny had explained: “It's on account o' Nellie, o' course. ”

“ They'll have a bit o' money put by—if her mother hasn't squandered it all on her schoolin'. An' her without a relative in the wide worrld! 'Tis hard, sure enough. We'll have to coax her back with us to-night, thin. ”