“Gracious! your hand’s like an ice-ball!” exclaimed Norah.

Pinky looked at the child, and grew faint at heart.  She had large hazel eyes, that gleamed with a singular lustre out of the suffering, grimed and wasted little face, so pale and sad and pitiful that the sight of it was enough to draw tears from any but the brutal and hardened.

“Are you sick?” asked Norah.

“No, she’s not sick; she’s only shamming,” growled Flanagan.

“You shut up!” retorted Norah.  “I wasn’t speaking to you.”  Then she repeated her question: 

“Are you sick, Nell?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Norah laid her hand on the child’s head: 

“Does it hurt here?”

“Oh yes!  It hurts so I can’t see good,” answered Nell.

“It’s all a lie!  I know her; she’s shamming.”

“Oh no, Norah!” cried the child, a sudden hope blending with the fear in her voice.  “I ain’t shamming at all.  I fell down ever so many times in the street, and ’most got run over.  Oh dear! oh dear!” and she clung to the woman with a gesture of despair piteous to see.

“I don’t believe you are, Nell,” said Norah, kindly.  Then, to the woman, “Now mind, Flanagan, Nell’s sick; d’ye hear?”

The woman only uttered a defiant growl.

“She’s not to be licked again to-night.”  Norah spoke as one having authority.

“I wish ye’d be mindin’ y’r own business, and not come interfarin’ wid me.  She’s my gal, and I’ve a right to lick her if I plaze.”

“Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t,” retorted Norah.

“Who says she isn’t my gal?” screamed the woman, firing up at this and reaching out for Nell, who shrunk closer to Norah.

“Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t,” said the queen, quietly repeating her last sentence; “and I think maybe she isn’t.  So take care and mind what I say.  Nell isn’t to be licked any more to-night.”

“Oh, Norah,” sobbed the child, in a husky, choking voice, “take me, won’t you?  She’ll pinch me, and she’ll hit my head on the wall, and she’ll choke me and knock me.  Oh, Norah, Norah!”

Pinky could stand this no longer.  Catching up the bundle of rags in her arms, she sprang out of the cellar and ran across the street to the queen’s house, Norah and Flanagan coming quickly after her.  At the door, through which Pinky had passed, Norah paused, and turning to the infuriated Irish woman, said, sternly,

“Go back!  I won’t have you in here; and if you make a row, I’ll tell John to lock you up.”

“I want my Nell,” said the woman, her manner changing.  There was a shade of alarm in her voice.

“You can’t have her to-night; so that’s settled.  And if there’s any row, you’ll be locked up.”  Saying which, Norah went in and shut the door, leaving Flanagan on the outside.

The bundle of dirty rags with the wasted body of a child inside, the body scarcely heavier than the rags, was laid by Pinky in the corner of a settee, and the unsightly mass shrunk together like something inanimate.