argument.
For who in their right mind would do up a little girl’s hair like that of a woman of eighteen and then allow her to run, shoeless, out into the streets? Grown whores leave their hair down as a rule, trying to look as young as they can. Parade with their flimsy shirts open to their navels, their parched, brittle locks trailing behind them like brushwood twigs, hoping at least in appearance to shave off a few years’ worth of being poked with knives and cudgels and every other tool known to man. The children, though. Kinchin-mabs are most often hidden away indoors. But when they do walk abroad, they’re painted to look like tiny society women. Hair pinned up like the belles of a ghastly miniature ball.
“You think she escaped from a disorderly house,” I said. “If she did, she’s for a religious charity if she likes and back on the streets if she doesn’t. Never the House of Refuge. Not if I have a say in it.”
The House of Refuge is an asylum for orphaned, half-orphaned, vagrant, and delinquent children, just north of the populated city at Twenty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. Its aim is to remove homeless kinchin from the streets, where they are visible, and set them on an enlightened path from behind closed gates, where they are not visible. The main sticking point being less about the enlightenment and more about whether the self-satisfaction of New York’s upper classes is in any way threatened by the sight of starving six-year-olds huddled in sewage troughs. I happen to be unimpressed by the establishment’s precepts.
Nodding in agreement, Mrs. Boehm set her rib cage against the wood, unwrapping the wax paper and then breaking off a piece of the dark chocolate she’d revealed. She ate it pensively, pushing the small treasure toward me.
“What do you think she meant by saying, ‘They’ll tear him to pieces’?” I asked.
“Animal, perhaps. Into the backyard she goes, she has a favorite pig, the pig is killed, she runs. Blood from slaughter, I’m thinking. A cow, even, or a pony with broken leg sold for glue. Yes, her beloved pony. Of course they would tear him to pieces. We will find out tomorrow.”
Mrs. Boehm stood up, lifted a candle.
“Tomorrow I’ve only a half-shift,” I lied to the friendly little knobs of bones running down her back under the dressing gown. “You needn’t bother waking me.”
“Very good. I am glad you are a police. We need police,” she said thoughtfully, collecting her magazine. Then, after a pause. “It was only her pony, I am thinking.”
Mrs. Boehm was a practical woman, I told myself. And she was right: the blood could have come from anywhere. Only a pony’s, or even a dog’s, run down by a carriage and then promptly swarming with rats. I relaxed a fraction.
But the thought of rats left me sick and shaken again, staring uselessly across the room at a hairline crack in the plaster. I wondered, when carrying the other candle up to my chambers, just what it would take after a day like that to get my usual self back.
Next morning , I awoke from a dead slumber to a pair of grey eyes examining me.
I stared, not comprehending. Still flat in bed and yet thrown offbalance. Sunlight streamed through my window, which never was the state of things when my eyes opened. My straw tick was still up against the wall, for the thought of bedding down in the sleeping-closet depressed me beyond words, and I’d have been pretty shocked the day before to think I’d ever be entertaining any company. Yet here I was. Wearing only loose drawstring smallclothes that stopped well above my knees, with enormous ash-colored irises pinned to my frame.
The little girl wore the lengthy blouse Mrs. Boehm had given her the night before. It hung to mid-thigh, and under she boasted a small boy’s set of nankeen trousers. Interesting, I thought. Her rosewood-colored hair was down now, tied back with a piece of kitchen twine.
“What are you doing in here?” I
For who in their right mind would do up a little girl’s hair like that of a woman of eighteen and then allow her to run, shoeless, out into the streets? Grown whores leave their hair down as a rule, trying to look as young as they can. Parade with their flimsy shirts open to their navels, their parched, brittle locks trailing behind them like brushwood twigs, hoping at least in appearance to shave off a few years’ worth of being poked with knives and cudgels and every other tool known to man. The children, though. Kinchin-mabs are most often hidden away indoors. But when they do walk abroad, they’re painted to look like tiny society women. Hair pinned up like the belles of a ghastly miniature ball.
“You think she escaped from a disorderly house,” I said. “If she did, she’s for a religious charity if she likes and back on the streets if she doesn’t. Never the House of Refuge. Not if I have a say in it.”
The House of Refuge is an asylum for orphaned, half-orphaned, vagrant, and delinquent children, just north of the populated city at Twenty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. Its aim is to remove homeless kinchin from the streets, where they are visible, and set them on an enlightened path from behind closed gates, where they are not visible. The main sticking point being less about the enlightenment and more about whether the self-satisfaction of New York’s upper classes is in any way threatened by the sight of starving six-year-olds huddled in sewage troughs. I happen to be unimpressed by the establishment’s precepts.
Nodding in agreement, Mrs. Boehm set her rib cage against the wood, unwrapping the wax paper and then breaking off a piece of the dark chocolate she’d revealed. She ate it pensively, pushing the small treasure toward me.
“What do you think she meant by saying, ‘They’ll tear him to pieces’?” I asked.
“Animal, perhaps. Into the backyard she goes, she has a favorite pig, the pig is killed, she runs. Blood from slaughter, I’m thinking. A cow, even, or a pony with broken leg sold for glue. Yes, her beloved pony. Of course they would tear him to pieces. We will find out tomorrow.”
Mrs. Boehm stood up, lifted a candle.
“Tomorrow I’ve only a half-shift,” I lied to the friendly little knobs of bones running down her back under the dressing gown. “You needn’t bother waking me.”
“Very good. I am glad you are a police. We need police,” she said thoughtfully, collecting her magazine. Then, after a pause. “It was only her pony, I am thinking.”
Mrs. Boehm was a practical woman, I told myself. And she was right: the blood could have come from anywhere. Only a pony’s, or even a dog’s, run down by a carriage and then promptly swarming with rats. I relaxed a fraction.
But the thought of rats left me sick and shaken again, staring uselessly across the room at a hairline crack in the plaster. I wondered, when carrying the other candle up to my chambers, just what it would take after a day like that to get my usual self back.
Next morning , I awoke from a dead slumber to a pair of grey eyes examining me.
I stared, not comprehending. Still flat in bed and yet thrown offbalance. Sunlight streamed through my window, which never was the state of things when my eyes opened. My straw tick was still up against the wall, for the thought of bedding down in the sleeping-closet depressed me beyond words, and I’d have been pretty shocked the day before to think I’d ever be entertaining any company. Yet here I was. Wearing only loose drawstring smallclothes that stopped well above my knees, with enormous ash-colored irises pinned to my frame.
The little girl wore the lengthy blouse Mrs. Boehm had given her the night before. It hung to mid-thigh, and under she boasted a small boy’s set of nankeen trousers. Interesting, I thought. Her rosewood-colored hair was down now, tied back with a piece of kitchen twine.
“What are you doing in here?” I
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