Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/26

2 "I wish Benny would come," said she to herself. "I wonder what has kept him? He said he'd be here when the clock struck four." And she wrapped her tattered clothes more closely around her, and looked eagerly down Lord Street and up and down Castle Street. But no Benny appeared in sight.

"I'm glad as how they's lightin' the lamps, anyhow. It'll make it feel a bit warmer, I reckon," she went on, "for it's terrible cold. But Benny won't be long now, nohow. I hope he's sold all his fusees."

And she looked wistfully at the unsold matches lying in her lap. Then, after a pause she went on again,

"I's had desp'rate bad luck to-day, I reckon the gen'lmen thinks it too much trouble to take off their gloves to get at the coppers. 1 wonder if they know what it is to be cold and hungry like me?" And the child moved a little farther into the shadow of the church, to escape the keen cold blast that swept up from the river.

Little Nelly Bates was a delicate-looking child, with a pale, thoughtful face, and big, round, dreamy-looking eyes. She had none of that wolfish expression which so often characterizes the street Arabs of our large towns and cities; on the contrary, there was an air of refinement about her that was difficult to account for. Poor little waif! Her own mother she could not remember. She had only known a stepmother—a cruel, drunken woman; and, alas! her father was no better. Almost as soon as she could walk she had been sent into the streets with her brother Benny, who was a