"Gentleman, huh?" Katy's head cocked alertly.
"Yes, he speak at me on the street, and he say he take me and my frien' out to nize dinner. He are wait in those street now."
Katy went to the window, leaned far out, saw the man on the street, and drew swiftly in, her face turning first white, then red.
"Sunny, ain't you got any better sense than speak to a man on the street?"
"Ho, Katy, I din nod speag ad those man," declared Sunny indignantly. "He speag ad me, and I do nod lig' hees eye. I do nod lig' hees mout', nor none of hees face, but I speag perlite bi-cause he are ask me eat those dinner."
"Well, you poor little simp, let me tell you who _that_ is. He's the dirtiest swine in Harlem. You're muddied if he looks at you. He's--he's--I can't tell you what he is, because you're so ignorunt you wouldn't understand. You and me go out with the likes of him! Sa-ay, I'd rather duck into a sewer. I'd come out cleaner, believe me. Now watch how little K-k-k-katy treats that kind of dirt."
She transferred the more decayed of the meat and bones from the package to the pail of water which had recently served for her "family wash." This she elevated to the window, put her head out, and as if sweetly to signal the waiting one below, she called:
"Hi-yi-yi-yi--i-i!" and as the man below looked up expectantly, she gave him the full benefit of the pail's contents in his upturned face.
The sight of the drenched, spluttering and foully swearing rat on the street below struck the funny side of the two young girls. Clinging together, they burst into laughter, holding their sides, and with their young heads tossed back; but their laughter had an element of hysteria to it, and when at last they stopped, and the stream of profanity from below continued to pour into the room, Katy soberly closed the window. For a while they stared at each other in a scared silence. Then Katy, squaring her shoulders, belligerently said:
Sunny was standing now by the bureau. A very thoughtful expression had come to Sunny's face, and she opened the top drawer and drew out her little package.
"Katy," she said softly, "here are some little thing ad these package, which mebbe it goin' to help us."
"Say, I been wonderin' what you got in that parcel ever since you been here. I'd a asked you, but as you didn't volunteer no inflamation, I was too much of a lady to press it, and I'm telling the world, I'd not open no package the first time myself, without knowin' what was in it, especially as that one looks kind of mysteriees and foreign looking. I heard about a lady named Pandora something and when she come to open a box she hadn't no right to open, it turned into smoke and she couldn't get it back to where she wanted it to go. What you got there, dearie, if it ain't being too personal to ask? I'll bet you got gold and diamonds hidden away somewhere."