Page 74 - An Australian Lassie

"Please give me a penny, sir; my mother dear is dead, And, oh! T am so hungry, sir--a penny please for bread."

At the end of the first verse she found it necessary to run her eye over the paper before beginning the second.

Perhaps it was just as well for her serenity that she did not look up as she sang. For just as soon as her voice
rose into anything approaching a tune--it was near the end of the first verse--a face looked down upon her
from the corner window of the second story of the chemist's house.

Tt was a young face, early old--white and drawn and marked by the unmistakable lines of suffering.

Betty knew nothing about the trouble of the world in those days; nothing of suffering, nothing of sorrow. And
the woman above her knew of all. She leaned over the window-sill and her eyes smiled pityingly as they
rested on the small bared head.

She had been praying her morning prayer near the open window, begging for strength to bear her sorrows, and
for as many as might be to be taken from her, when Betty's voice quavered right up to her window.

She looked down, and there was the small singer's curly brown head. She looked longer, and saw Betty clasp
a bare foot in one hand and stand on one foot, drop the foot from her hand and reverse the action.

Tt was merely a habit of Betty's, but the woman found in it a sign that the child was worn and weary--worn
and weary before seven o'clock in the morning.

She drew her dressing-gown around her, searched her dress pocket for her purse, and leaning out dropped
sixpence upon the pavement close to the little singer.

Betty stopped at once and looked around her, down the street and around the corner; at the shop shutters and
door, but never once so high as the windows.

The woman smiled to herself.

"Poor little mite," she said. "T must remember even the little children have their griefs! Tt should make me
grumble less."

Betty ran along the street in the direction John had taken. She felt she must tell some one. Then, as a thought
struck her, she ran back to the house, looked up to the second story and saw a smiling face, and then set off
again, running down the street for John.

Not seeing him, she stopped at the next corner and examined her coin lovingly. Then she looked up at that
corner window and began to sing again.

But this time her reward came from the street. Three bluejackets were walking down the street to the Quay,
lurching over the pavement as they walked. The child's song touched and stirred that latent sentimentality of
theirs.

Her "or surely T shall die," brought a silver threepence from one of them, and a copper from each of the others.

Betty felt wealthy now, beyond the dreams of avarice. She had made a shilling in an hour!

She looked at the post office clock high up in the air there above her head, and it informed her that it was only
a quarter past seven. Not eight o'clock yet! And she had made a shilling! Twelve pennies! As much as she
received in six months by staying at home!