Mr. Pease promised that he would do all he could, and sent a person out with the old lady, to visit "Mary," and obtain particulars: he soon returned and corroborated all the old lady's statements. Mr. Pease then took a friend and started to see what could be done.
In Willet street is a rickety old wooden building, filled to overflowing with the very refuse of humanity. The basement is lighted with two small windows half under ground; and in this wretched hole lived Mary and her children. As Mr. Pease descended the steps into the room, he heard some one say, "Here he comes, grandmother! he's come--he's come!"
The door was opened. On a pile of rags in the corner lay Mary, "my Mary," as the old lady tearfully called her.
God of mercy! what a wreck of beautiful womanhood! Her large blue eyes glared with maniac wildness, under the influence of intoxication. Long waves of auburn hair fell, in tangled masses, over a form wasted, yet beautiful in its graceful outlines.
"_Such_ a place!" as her mother had, weeping, said. Not a table, or chair, or bedstead, or article of furniture in it, of any description. On the mantle-piece stood a beer-bottle with a half burnt candle in its nose. A few broken, dirty dishes stood upon the shelf, and a quantity of filthy rags lay scattered round the floor.
The grandmother was holding by the hand a sweet child of eight years, with large, bright eyes, and auburn hair (like poor Mary's) falling about her neck. An older girl of twelve, with a sweet, Madonna face, that seemed to light up even _that_ wretched place with a beam of Heaven, stood near, bearing in her arms a babe of sixteen months, which was not so large as one of eight months should have been. Its little hands looked like bird's claws, and its little bones seemed almost piercing the skin.
The old lady went up to her daughter, saying, "Mary, dear, this is the gentleman who is willing to take you to his house, if you will try to be good."
"Get out of the room, you old hypocrite," snarled the intoxicated woman, "or I'll----(and she clutched a hatchet beside her)--I'll show you! You are the worst old woman I ever knew, except the one you brought in here the other day, and she is a fiend outright. Talk to _me_ about being _good_!--ha--ha"--and she laughed an idiot laugh.