“Got an ’ead on her shoulders, that child!” On their way up the garden Tilda kept silence.  She was busy, in fact, with Sam Bossom’s complicated itinerary, repeating it over and over to fix it in her mind.  She was fearful, too, lest some inquisitive neighbour, catching sight of them, might stop them and challenge to know their business.  The streets once gained, she felt easier—­easier indeed with every yard she put between her and that house of horrors.  But the streets, too, held their dangers.  The bells had rung in the elementary schools; all respectable boys and girls were indoors, deep in the afternoon session, and she had heard of attendance officers, those prowling foes.

At the end of Pollard’s Row—­a squalid street of tenement houses—­she suffered indeed a terrible scare.  A benevolent-looking middle-aged lady—­a district visitor, in fact—­emerging from one of these houses and arrested perhaps at sight of the crutch or of the boy’s strange rags, stopped her and asked where she was going.

Tilda fell back on the truth.  It was economical.

“To the ’orspital,” she answered, “the Good Samaritan.”

Then she blundered.

“It’s ’ereabouts, ain’t it, ma’am?”

“Not very far,” replied the lady; “two or three streets only.  Shall I show you the way?  I have plenty of time.”

“Thank you,” said Tilda (she was suffering a reaction, and for a moment it dulled the edge of her wits), “but I know the Good Samaritan, an’ they know all about me.”

“What’s the matter?”

“’Ip trouble, ma’am.  I been treated for it there these three weeks.”

“That is strange,” said the lady.  “You have been going there for three weeks, and yet you don’t know your way?”

“I been a in-patient.  I was took there”—­she was about to say “on a stretcher,” but checked herself in time—­“I was took there in the evenin’ after dark.  Father couldn’ take me by day, in his work-time.  An’ this is my first turn as day-patient, an’ that’s why my brother ’ere is let off school to see me along,” she wound up with a desperate rush of invention.

“You don’t live in my district?  What’s your father’s name?”

“No, ma’am.  He’s called Porter—­Sam Porter, an’ he works on the coal-barges.  But I wouldn’ advise you, I reely wouldn’, because father’s got opinions, an’ can’t abide visitors.  I’ve ’eard ’im threaten ’em quite vi’lent.”

“Poor child!”

“But I won’t ’ave you say anything ’gainst father,” said Tilda, taking her up quickly, “for ’e’s the best father in the world, if ‘twasn’ fur the drink.”

The effect of this masterstroke was that the lady gave her a copper and let her go, wishing her a speedy recovery.  The gift, although she took it, did not appear to placate Tilda.  She hobbled up the next street with quickened pace, now and then muttering angrily.