Always kindly, but moved to be unusually kind this evening, and
having bestowed kind words on most of the children and aged people
he has met, he at once bends down, and speaks to this woman.
'Are you ill?'
'No, deary,' she answers, without looking at him, and with no
departure from her strange blind stare.
'Are you blind?'
'No, deary.'
'Are you lost, homeless, faint? What is the matter, that you stay
here in the cold so long, without moving?'
By slow and stiff efforts, she appears to contract her vision until
it can rest upon him; and then a curious film passes over her, and
she begins to shake.
He straightens himself, recoils a step, and looks down at her in a
dread amazement; for he seems to know her.
'Good Heaven!' he thinks, next moment. 'Like Jack that night!'
As he looks down at her, she looks up at him, and whimpers: 'My
lungs is weakly; my lungs is dreffle bad. Poor me, poor me, my
cough is rattling dry!' and coughs in confirmation horribly.
'Where do you come from?'
'Come from London, deary.' (Her cough still rending her.)
'Where are you going to?'
'Back to London, deary. I came here, looking for a needle in a
haystack, and I ain't found it. Look'ee, deary; give me three-and-
sixpence, and don't you be afeard for me. I'll get back to London
then, and trouble no one. I'm in a business. - Ah, me! It's
slack, it's slack, and times is very bad! - but I can make a shift
to live by it.'
'Do you eat opium?'
'Smokes it,' she replies with difficulty, still racked by her
cough.
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