With a full appreciation of the child’s fear of the police,—­begging is a crime in many American towns—­she carefully questioned her, watching for the dreaded officer herself.

It was the old story—­a dying mother—­no father—­no one to do anything—­a child sent out to cunningly defy the law, but it seemed to be only for bread.

Obviously the thing to do was to deliver the child up to the police.  It would be at once properly cared for, and the mother also.

But Miss Moreland knew too much of official charity to be guilty of that.

The easiest thing was to give her money.  But, unluckily, she belonged to a society pledged not to give alms in the streets, and her sense of the power of a moral obligation was a strong notion of duty, which had descended to her from her Puritan ancestors.  There was one thing left to do.

“Do you know Chardon Street?” she asked.

The child nodded.

There was a flower shop on the corner.  She led the child across to it, entered, and asked for an envelope.  She wrote a few lines on a card, enclosed it and sealed the envelope.  Then she went out to the side-walk again with the child.  Stooping over her she made sure that the little one really did know the street.  “It isn’t far from here,” she said.  “Give that to any one there, and somebody will go right home with you to see your mother, to warm you, you poor little mite, and feed you, and make you quite happy.”

She did not explain, and the child would not have understood, that she vouched for a special donation for the case as a sort of commemorative gift.  The sum was large—­it was a quixotic sort of salve to a sick conscience which told her that she ought to go herself.

The child, still sobbing, turned away, and drearily started up the hill.  She did not go far, however.  Miss Moreland had her misgivings on that point.  And, just as she was about to draw a breath of relief, convinced that, after all, she would go, the girl stopped deliberately in the shadow of a tree, and sat down on the snow-covered curbstone.

No need to ask what the trouble was.  The poor are born with a horror of organized charity.  It obliges them to be looked over in all their misery; it presumes a worthiness, or its pretence, which they resent almost as much as they do the intrusion of the visiting committee.  This disinclination is as old as poverty, and is the rock ahead of all organized charity.  Its exemplification was very trying to Miss Moreland at that moment, and the crouching figure was exasperating.

She pursued the child.  She pulled her rather roughly to her feet.  It was so provoking to have her sit down in the cold, and to so personify all that she wanted so ardently,—­it was purely selfish, she knew that,—­to put out of her mind.  There seemed but one thing to do:  go with the child.

She knew that if she did not, she would not sleep that night, nor smile the next day—­and that seemed so unfair to others.  Besides, it was not yet so very late.