“What could I get it boarded for outright?” asked Mrs. Bray.
“For 'most anything, 'cording to how it's done. But why not, while you're about it, bleed the old lady, its grandmother, a little deeper, and take a few drops for the baby?”
“Guess you're kind o' right about that, Fan; anyhow, we'll make a start on it. You find another place for the brat.”
“The sooner, the better. It might die of cold any night in that horrible den. Ugh!”
“I've been in worse places. Bedlow street is full of them, and so is Briar street and Dirty alley. You don't know anything about it.”
“Maybe not, and maybe I don't care to know. At present I want to settle about this baby. You'll find another place for it?”
“And then steal it from the woman who has it now?”
“Yes; no trouble in the world. She's drunk every night,” answered Pinky Swett, rising to go.
“You'll see me to-morrow?” said Mrs. Bray.
“And you won't forget about the policies?”
“Not I. We shall make a grand hit, or I'm a fool. Day-day!” Pinky waved her hand gayly, and then retired.
_A COLD_ wet drizzling rain was beginning to fall when Pinky Swett emerged from the house. Twilight was gathering drearily. She drew her thin shawl closely, and shivered as the east wind struck her with a chill.
At hurried walk of five or ten minutes brought her to a part of the town as little known to its citizens generally as if it were in the centre of Africa--a part of the town where vice, crime, drunkenness and beggary herd together in the closest and most shameless contact; where men and women, living in all foulness, and more like wild beasts than human beings, prey greedily upon each other, hurting, depraving and marring God's image in all over whom they can get power or influenced--_a very hell upon the earth!_--at part of the town where theft and robbery and murder are plotted, and from which prisons and almshouses draw their chief population.
That such a herding together, almost in the centre of a great Christian city, of the utterly vicious and degraded, should be permitted, when every day's police and criminal records give warning of its cost and danger, is a marvel and a reproach. Almost every other house, in portions of this locality, is a dram-shop, where the vilest liquors are sold. Policy-offices, doing business in direct violation of law, are in every street and block, their work of plunder and demoralization going on with open doors and under the very eyes of the police. Every one of them is known to these officers. But arrest is useless. A hidden and malign influence, more potent than justice, has power to protect the traffic and hold the guilty offenders harmless. Conviction is rarely, if ever, reached.