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Beyond the end of this building was a vacant lot and Great Taylor moved more swiftly with head averted. She had passed nearly to the next building before she stopped and wheeled around defiantly. "I ain't afraid to look," she said to herself and gazed across at Grit's junk-cart, with its string of bells, partly concealed back against the fence. It was standing in the shadow, silent, unmanned.
This had been Grit's song; perhaps the only one he had known, for he had shoved that blest cart of his since a boy of thirteen; he had worn himself as threadbare as the clothes on his back, and at last the threads had snapped. He had died of old age in his thirties. And his junk-cart, with its bells, stood, silent and unmanned, upon the vacant lot just around the corner.
This had come to Grit together with fifty pounds of waste paper in gunny-sacks; and though Nell had never undergone the mental torture of informing herself as to its contents, she had dubbed the book "Grit's Bible," for he had pawed over it, spelling out the words, every night for years.
Taking up the thread of a conversation that had been broken off by his wife's presence, Mr. Gulmore began: "I don't say Roberts'll win, Ida. The bettin''s the other way; but I'm not sure, for I don't know the crowd. He may come out on top, though I hev noticed that young men who run into their first fight and get badly whipped ain't likely to fight desperate the second time. Grit's half trainin'!"
"You!.... Buy Grit's junk business!" What did he want with junk? He was clean! From head to foot he was clean! His hair was parted. "You ain't a junkman." The man laughed. "I don't know about that." He studied her a moment in silence.
Grit's widow was "Great" Taylor, whose inadequate first name was Nell a young, immaculate creature whose body was splendid even if her vision and spirit were small. She never had understood Grit.
"What is the matter with that dog?" asked Dick, in a puzzled voice. Grit's howl changed to a bark, and at the same moment, Larry Dexter, who was passing, cried out: "Fire! There's a fire in the motor-room! Where are the extinguishers?" A black cloud of smoke rushed out, enveloping Grit, who howled dismally. "What did it?" "Had we better descend?" "Everybody get busy!" "Fire extinguishers here!"
She plucked it from the shelf, holding the sticky handle between two fingers, and dropped it into the peach crate that served as a waste-basket. The noise when the jug struck the bottom of the crate startled her. Great Taylor stood there listening. Someone was slowly ascending the circular staircase. The woman could hear a footfall on the iron steps. "Grit's gone," she reassured herself.
Grit had left her nothing, absolutely nothing, but an unpleasant memory of himself his grimy face and hands, his crooked nose and baggy breeches.... And Great Taylor was willing that every thought of him should leave her forever. "Grit's gone," she told herself. "I ain't going to think of him any more."
She looked for a means of escape and had succeeded in getting one wheel over the curb when a man touched her on the arm. "Someone is calling from the window up there," he said in a low weary voice like Grit's. Nell swung around, gasping, but the man had moved away down the sidewalk and a woman was calling to her from a second-story window.
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