She looked down and saw the old man who had promised her his protection in case Mother Mawks should persecute her. “Is that you, Jim? Come upstairs; it’s better than talking out there.” He obeyed, and stood before her in the wretched room, looking curiously both at her and the baby. A wiry, wolfish-faced being was Jim Duds, as he was familiarly called, though his own name was the aristocratic and singularly inappropriate one of James Douglas. He was more like an animal than a human creature, with his straggling gray hair, bushy beard, and sharp teeth protruding like fangs from beneath his upper lip. His profession was that of an area thief, and he considered it a sufficiently respectable calling.
“Mother Mawks has got it this time,” he said, with a grin which was more like a snarl. “Joe’s blood was up, and he pounded her nigh into a jelly. She’ll leave ye quiet now; so long as ye pay the hire reg’lar ye’ll have Joe on yer side. If so be as there’s a bad day, ye’d better not come home at all.”
“I know,” said Liz; “but she’s always had the money for the child, and surely it wasn’t much to ask her to let me keep it warm on such a cold night as this.”
Jim Duds looked meditative. “Wot makes yer care for that babby so much?” he asked. “‘T ain’t yourn.”
“No,” she said, sadly. “That’s true. But it seems something to hold on to, like. See what my life has been!” She stopped, and a wave of colour flushed her pallid features. “From a little girl, nothing but the streets--the long, cruel streets! and I just a bit of dirt on the pavement--no more; flung here, flung there, and at last swept into the gutter. All dark--all useless!” She laughed a little. “Fancy, Jim! I’ve never seen the country!”
“Nor I,” said Jim, biting a piece of straw reflectively. “It must be powerful fine, with naught but green trees an’ posies a-blowin’ an’ a growin’ everywheres. There ain’t many kitching areas there, though, I’m told.”
Liz went on, scarcely heeding him: “The baby seems to me like what the country must be--all harmless and sweet and quiet; when I hold it so, my heart gets peaceful somehow--I don’t know why.”
Again Jim looked speculative. He waved his bitten straw expressively.
“Ye’ve had ‘sperience, Liz. Hain’t ye met no man like wot ye could care fur?”