A mob of small boys, clustered 'round a "camp fire" they had made on the
street, were leaping wildly through the flames. It was a mammoth cauldron
here, seething, bubbling over with a million foreign lives. Deborah's big
family.
She turned into a doorway, went down a long dark passage and came into a
court-yard enclosed by greasy tenement walls that reared to a spot of dark
blue sky where a few quiet stars were twinkling down. With a feeling of
repugnance Roger followed his daughter into a tall rear building and up a
rickety flight of stairs. On the fourth landing she knocked at a door, and
presently it was opened by a stout young Irish woman with flushed haggard
features and disheveled hair.
"Oh. Good evening, Mrs. Berry."
"Good evening. Come in," was the curt reply. They entered a small stifling
room where were a stove, two kitchen chairs and three frowzled beds in
corners. On one of the beds lay a baby asleep, on another two small
restless boys sat up and watched the visitors. A sick man lay upon the
third. And a cripple boy, a boarder here, stood on his crutches watching
them. Roger was struck at once by his face. Over the broad cheek bones the
sallow skin was tightly drawn, but there was a determined set to the jaws
that matched the boy's shrewd grayish eyes, and his face lit up in a
wonderful smile.
"Hello, Miss Deborah," he said. His voice had a cheery quality.
"Hello, Johnny.
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