The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson BurnettЧитать онлайн книгу.
would tell her to “move on.”
Sara clutched her little fourpenny piece and hesitated a few seconds. Then she spoke to her.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
The child shuffled herself and her rags a little more.
“Ain’t I jist?” she said in a hoarse voice. “Jist ain’t I?”
“Haven’t you had any dinner?” said Sara.
“No dinner,”—more hoarsely still and with more shuffling. “Nor yet no bre’fast—nor yet no supper. No nothin’.”
“Since when?” asked Sara.
“Dunno. Never got nothin’ today—nowhere. I’ve axed an’ axed.”
Just to look at her made Sara more hungry and faint. But those queer little thoughts were at work in her brain, and she was talking to herself, though she was sick at heart.
“If I’m a princess,” she was saying—“if I’m a princess—when they were poor and driven from their thrones—they always shared—with the populace—if they met one poorer and hungrier than themselves. They always shared. Buns are a penny each. If it had been sixpence I could have eaten six. It won’t be enough for either of us. But it will be better than nothing.”
“Wait a minute,” she said to the beggar child.
She went into the shop. It was warm and smelled deliciously. The woman was just going to put some more hot buns into the window.
“If you please,” said Sara, “have you lost fourpence—a silver fourpence?” And she held the forlorn little piece of money out to her.
The woman looked at it and then at her—at her intense little face and draggled, once fine clothes.
“Bless us! no,” she answered. “Did you find it?”
“Yes,” said Sara. “In the gutter.”
“Keep it, then,” said the woman. “It may have been there for a week, and goodness knows who lost it. You could never find out.”
“I know that,” said Sara, “but I thought I would ask you.”
“Not many would,” said the woman, looking puzzled and interested and good-natured all at once.
“Do you want to buy something?” she added, as she saw Sara glance at the buns.
“Four buns, if you please,” said Sara. “Those at a penny each.”
The woman went to the window and put some in a paper bag.
Sara noticed that she put in six.
“I said four, if you please,” she explained. “I have only fourpence.”
“I’ll throw in two for makeweight,” said the woman, with her good-natured look. “I dare say you can eat them sometime. Aren’t you hungry?”
A mist rose before Sara’s eyes.
“Yes,” she answered. “I am very hungry, and I am much obliged to you for your kindness; and”—she was going to add—“there is a child outside who is hungrier than I am.” But just at that moment two or three customers came in at once, and each one seemed in a hurry, so she could only thank the woman again and go out.
The beggar girl was still huddled up in the corner of the step. She looked frightful in her wet and dirty rags. She was staring straight before her with a stupid look of suffering, and Sara saw her suddenly draw the back of her roughened black hand across her eyes to rub away the tears which seemed to have surprised her by forcing their way from under her lids. She was muttering to herself.
Sara opened the paper bag and took out one of the hot buns, which had already warmed her own cold hands a little.
“See,” she said, putting the bun in the ragged lap, “this is nice and hot. Eat it, and you will not feel so hungry.”
The child started and stared up at her, as if such sudden, amazing good luck almost frightened her; then she snatched up the bun and began to cram it into her mouth with great wolfish bites.
“Oh, my! Oh, my!” Sara heard her say hoarsely, in wild delight. “Oh, my!”
Sara took out three more buns and put them down.
The sound in the hoarse, ravenous voice was awful.
“She is hungrier than I am,” she said to herself. “She’s starving.” But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun. “I’m not starving,” she said—and she put down the fifth.
The little ravening London savage was still snatching and devouring when she turned away. She was too ravenous to give any thanks, even if she had ever been taught politeness—which she had not. She was only a poor little wild animal.
“Good-by,” said Sara.
When she reached the other side of the street she looked back. The child had a bun in each hand and had stopped in the middle of a bite to watch her. Sara gave her a little nod, and the child, after another stare,—a curious lingering stare,—jerked her shaggy head in response, and until Sara was out of sight she did not take another bite or even finish the one she had begun.
At that moment the baker-woman looked out of her shop window.
“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. “If that young un hasn’t given her buns to a beggar child! It wasn’t because she didn’t want them, either. Well, well, she looked hungry enough. I’d give something to know what she did it for.”
She stood behind her window for a few moments and pondered. Then her curiosity got the better of her. She went to the door and spoke to the beggar child.
“Who gave you those buns?” she asked her.
The child nodded her head toward Sara’s vanishing figure.
“What did she say?” inquired the woman.
“Axed me if I was ’ungry,” replied the hoarse voice.
“What did you say?”
“Said I was jist.”
“And then she came in and got the buns, and gave them to you, did she?”
The child nodded.
“How many?”
“Five.”
The woman thought it over.
“Left just one for herself,” she said in a low voice. “And she could have eaten the whole six—I saw it in her eyes.”
She looked after the little draggled far-away figure and felt more disturbed in her usually comfortable mind than she had felt for many a day.
“I wish she hadn’t gone so quick,” she said. “I’m blest if she shouldn’t have had a dozen.” Then she turned to the child.
“Are you hungry yet?” she said.
“I’m allus hungry,” was the answer, “but ’tain’t as bad as it was.”
“Come in here,” said the woman, and she held open the shop door.
The child got up and shuffled in. To be invited into a warm place full of bread seemed an incredible thing. She did not know what was going to happen. She did not care, even.
“Get yourself warm,” said the woman, pointing to a fire in the tiny back room. “And look here; when you are hard up for a bit of bread, you can come in here and ask for it. I’m blest if I won’t give it to you for that young one’s sake.”
* * * *
Sara found some comfort in her remaining bun. At all events, it was very hot, and it was better than nothing. As she walked along she broke off small pieces and ate them slowly to make them last longer.