AC dBooks

"
"What did you do?" I asked.
The woman laughed--bitterly, terribly.
"Do? Don't you _know_?"
I shook my head. The woman looked hard at me, and then at the child.
"Look here--are you a good gel?" she said.
Hardly knowing what she meant I answered that I hoped so
"'Ope? Don't you know _that_ neither?"
Then I caught her meaning, and answered faintly:
"Yes."
She looked searchingly into my eyes and said:
"I b'lieve you. Some gels is. S'elp me Gawd I don't know how they done
it, though."
I was shuddering and trembling, for I was catching glimpses, as if by
broken lights from hell, of the life behind--the wrecked hope, the
shattered faith, the human being hunted like a beast and at last turned
into one.
Just at that moment baby awoke and cried again. The woman looked at her
with the same look as before--not so much a smile as a sort of haggard
radiance.
Then leaning over me she blew puffs of alcoholic breath into baby's
face, and stretching out a coarse fat finger she tickled her under the
chin.


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