Cinderella, and Other StoriesDavis, Richard Harding
General
Cinderella, and Other Stories
Davis, Richard Harding
United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Then he came to another park, opening into a square, with lighted
saloons on one side, and on the other great sheds, with ships lying
beside them, and the electric lights showing their spars and masts
against the sky. It had ceased snowing, but the air from the river was
piercing and cold, and swept through the wires overhead with a ceaseless
moaning. The numbness had crept from his feet up over the whole extent
of his little body, and he dropped upon a flight of steps back of a
sailors' boarding-house, and shoved his hands inside of his jacket for
possible warmth. His fingers touched the figure he had hidden there and
closed upon it lightly, and then his head dropped back against the wall,
and he fell into a heavy sleep. The night passed on and grew colder, and
the wind came across the ice-blocked river with shriller, sharper
blasts, but Guido did not hear it.
"Chuckey" Martin, who blacked boots in front of the corner saloon in
summer and swept out the bar-room in winter, came out through the family
entrance and dumped a pan of hot ashes into the snow-bank, and then
turned into the house with a shiver. He saw a mass of something lying
curled up on the steps of the next house, and remembered it after he had
closed the door of the family entrance behind him and shoved the pan
under the stove. He decided at last that it might be one of the saloon's
customers, or a stray sailor with loose change in his pockets, which he
would not miss when he awoke. So he went out again, and picking Guido
up, brought him in in his arms and laid him out on the floor.
There were over thirty men in the place; they had been celebrating the
coming of Christmas; and three of them pushed each other out of the way
in their eagerness to pour very bad brandy between Guido's teeth.
"Chuckey" Martin felt a sense of proprietorship in Guido, by the right
of discovery, and resented this, pushing them away, and protesting that
the thing to do was to rub his feet with snow.
A fat oily chief engineer of an Italian tramp steamer dropped on his
knees beside Guido and beat the boy's hands, and with unsteady fingers
tore open his scarf and jacket, and as he did this the figure of the
plaster Virgin with her hands stretched out looked up at him from its
bed on Guido's chest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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