“Hardly, I think, but possibly,” said she, and moved away, with her little basket; while the gentlemen, swearing at the heat, the dust, and the smells, sauntered on, asseverated that Amy Waring was an odd sort of girl; and finally went in to the Washington Hotel, where each lolled back in an armchair, with the white duck legs reposing in another—­excepting Mr. Dinks, who poised his boots upon the window-sill that commanded Broadway; and so, comforted with a cigar in the mouth, and a glass of iced port-wine sangaree in the hand, the three young gentlemen labored through the hot hours until dinner.

Amy Waring walked quite as rapidly as the heat would permit.  She crossed the Park, and, striking into Fulton Street, continued toward the river, but turned into Water Street.  The old peach-women at the corners, sitting under huge cotton umbrellas, and parching in the heat, saw the lovely face going by, and marked the peculiarly earnest step, which the sitters in the streets, and consequent sharp students of faces and feet, easily enough recognized as the step of one who was bound upon some especial errand.  Clerks looked idly at her from open shop doors, and from windows above; and when she entered the marine region of Water Street, the heavy stores and large houses, which here and there were covered with a dull grime, as if the squalor within had exuded through the dingy red bricks, seemed to glare at her unkindly, and sullenly ask why youth, and beauty, and cleanly modesty should insult with sweet contrast that sordid gloom.

The heat only made it worse.  Half-naked children played in the foul gutters with the pigs, which roamed freely at large, and comfortably at home in the purlieus of the docks and the quarter of poverty.  Carts jostled by with hogsheads, and boxes, and bales; the red-faced carmen, furious with their horses, or smoking pipes whose odor did not sweeten the air, staring, with rude, curious eyes, at the lady making her way among the casks and bales upon the sidewalks.  There was nothing that could possibly cheer the eye or ear, or heart or imagination, in any part of the street—­not even the haggard faces, thin with want, rusty with exposure, and dull with drink, that listlessly looked down upon her from the windows of lodging-houses.

The door of one of these was open, and Amy Waring went in.  She passed rapidly through the desolate entry and up the dirty stairs with the broken railing—­stairs that creaked under her light step.  At a room upon the back of the house, in the third story, she stopped and tapped at the door.  A voice cried, “Who’s there?” The girl answered, “Amy,” and the door was immediately unlocked.

CHAPTER XX.

AUNT MARTHA.