Nibsys Christmas | Page 5

in rags, who struggled out of an alley with a broken pitcher in her
grimy fist, against the wind that set down the narrow slit like the
draught through a big factory chimney. Just at the mouth of the alley it
took her with a sudden whirl, a cyclone of 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 half-way 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 burned 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 bed-tick for a
bed; a foul-smelling slop-pail in the middle of the room; a crazy stove,
and back of it a door or gap opening upon darkness. There was
something in there, but what it was could only be surmised from a
heavy snore that rose and fell regularly. It was the bedroom of the
apartment, windowless, airless, and sunless, but rented at a price a
millionaire would denounce as robbery.
"That you, Liza?" said a voice that discovered a woman bending over
the stove. "Run 'n' get the childer. Dinner's ready."

The winter sun glancing down the wall of the opposite tenement, with a
hopeless effort to cheer the backyard, might have peeped through the
one window of the room in Mrs. McGroarty's "flat," had that window
not been coated with the dust of ages, and discovered that dinner-party
in action. It might have found a hundred like it in the alley. Four
unkempt children, copies each in his or her way of Liza and their
mother, Mrs. McGroarty, who "did washing" for a living. A meat bone,
a "cut" from the butcher's at four cents a pound, green pickles, stale
bread and beer. Beer for the four, a sup all round, the baby included.
Why not? It was the one relish the searching ray would have found
there. Potatoes were there, too--potatoes and meat! Say not the poor in
the tenements are starving. In New York only those starve who cannot
get work and have not the courage to beg. Fifty thousand always out of
a job, say those who pretend to know. A round half-million asking and
getting charity in eight years, say the statisticians of the Charity
Organization. Any one can go round and see for himself that no one
need starve in New York.
From across the yard the sunbeam, as it crept up the wall, fell
slantingly through the attic window whence issued the