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"Isn't this a public street? Haven't I a right to walk up and down with my friend?" Then Myra felt as if she were struck by lightning, or as if something sacred in her womanhood had been outraged. With a savage growl: "You little sheeny!" the man suddenly struck out a fist and hit Rhona in the chest. She lurched, doubled, and fell, saving herself with her hands.
And say, you've got to live just once got to be just downright woman for a little spell, anyway.... Come with me, kid ... my kind of life." Rhona looked at her terrified. She did not understand. What sort of woman was this? How live in luxury without working? How be downright woman? "What do you mean?" asked the young girl. So Millie told her.
Rhona rose from her bed, rushed to the door, pulled on the bars, and loosed a fearful shriek. The guard, running down, Millie, leaping forward, both cried: "What's the matter?" But the slim figure in the white nightgown fell down on the floor, and thus earned a few hours in the hospital. They set her to scrubbing floors next day, a work for which she had neither experience nor strength.
A growing and much-pleased crowd surrounded her, flinging remarks: "Lock-steps for yours! Hello, Mamie! Oh, you kid! Now will you be good! Carrie, go home and wash the dishes!" And one boy darted up and snapped the placard from her waist. The crowd laughed, but Rhona was swallowing bitter tears. They passed down Broadway a block or two, and then turned west.
Her sister Videy, who with Rhona Boswell was walking near us, was present at the parting a bright-eyed, dark-skinned little girl, a head shorter than Sinfi.
One of them, a thin little skeleton, pitiably ragged in dress, with hollow eyes and white face, was coughing in the cuff of the wind. She was plainly a consumptive a little wisp of a girl. She spoke brokenly, with a strong Russian accent. "It's good to see you yet, Rhona. I get so cold my bones ready to crack." She shivered and coughed. Rhona spoke softly.
The policeman smiled, and then seized Blondy and Rhona each by an arm and started to march them toward Broadway. Myra followed wildly. Her mind was in a whirl and the bitter tears blurred her eyes. What could she do? How could she help? She sensed in the policeman's word a menace to Rhona. Rhona was in trouble, and she, Myra, was as good as useless in this crisis.
Now I come to think on't, it's mose likely Mr. Cyril as she's a-goin' to marry, for I know it ain't no Romany chal. It can't be the funny un, added she, laughing. 'But where's the wedding to take place? 'I can't say as I knows ezackly, said Rhona; 'but I thinks it's by Knockers' Llyn if it ain't on the top o' Snowdon. 'Good heavens, girl! I said. 'What on earth makes you think that?
The wagon clanged through the cold, dark streets, darting through the icy edge of the wind, and the women huddled together. Rhona never forgot how that miserable wagonful chattered that noise of clicking teeth, the pulse of indrawn sighs, and the shivering of arms and chests.
Every wooded hill and every precipice, whether craggy and bald or feathered with pines, was bathed in light that would have made an Irish bog, or an Essex marsh, or an Isle of Ely fen, a land of poetry. Suddenly I felt some one touching my elbow. I turned round. It was Rhona Boswell.
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