like this. He had just come in, and there was nothing to fit him.
And he'd put his other hand over his bad eye and blink up at her
like this. And the littlest boy--oh, ha! ha! ha!--you ought have
seen that littlest boy. He was in skirts, an old dress they'd
given me to wear the first day I came; there were no pants small
enough for him. He'd back up into the corner and hide his
face--like this--and peep over his shoulder; he had a squint that
way, that made his face so funny. See, it makes you laugh
yourself. But his body--my God!--it was blue with welts! And
me--I'd put the baby down that'd been left on the door-steps of
the Cruelty, and I'd waltz up to the lady, the nice, patronizing,
rich lady, with her handkerchief to her nose and her lorgnette to
her eyes--see, like this. I knew just what graft would work her.
I knew what she wanted there. I'd learned. So I'd make her a
curtsy like this, and in the piousest sing-song I'd--"

There was a heavy step out in the hall--it was the policeman! I'd
forgot while I was talking. I was back--back in the empty garret,
at the top of the Cruelty. I could smell the smell of the poor,
the dirty, weak, sick poor. I could taste the porridge in the
thick little bowls, like those in the bear story Molly tells her
kid. I could hear the stifled sobs that wise, poor children
give--quiet ones, so they'll not be beaten again. I could feel
the night, when strange, deserted, tortured babies lie for the
first time, each in his small white cot, the new ones waking the
old with their cries in a nightmare of what had happened before
they got to the Cruelty. I could see the world barred over, as I
saw it first through the Cruelty's barred windows, and as I must
see it again, now that--