The first thing that impressed him was the abandonment that thrust itself upon him in the more crowded of these courts and alley-ways and back-streets, the despairing abandonment there of the decencies of living. The thin dwarfed children kicked and tumbled with naked limbs on the ground; many women leaned half-dressed and much unbuttoned from ground floor windows, or came out into the passage-ways slatternly. In one court two unkempt vile-tongued women of the town wrangled and abused each other to the amusement of the neighborhood, where the working poor were huddled together with those who live by shame. The children played close by as heedlessly as if such quarrels were common events, cursing themselves at each other with nimble filthy tongues. "There's a friend of mine lives here," said Nellie, turning into one of these narrow alleys that led, as they could see, into a busier and bustling street. "If you don't mind we'll go up and I can help her a bit, and you can see how one sort of sweating is done. I worked at it for a spell once, when dressmaking was slack. In the same house, too." She stopped at the doorway of one of a row of three-storied houses. On the doorstep were a group of little children, all barefooted and more or less ragged in spite of evident attempts to keep some of them patched into neatness. They looked familiarly at Nellie and curiously at Ned. "How's mother, Johnny?" asked Nellie of one of them, a small pinched little fellow of six or seven, who nursed a baby of a year or so old, an ill-nourished baby that seemed wilting in the heat. "She's working," answered the little fellow, looking anxiously at Nellie as she felt in her pocket. "There's a penny for you," said Nellie, "and here's a penny for Dicky," patting a little five-year-old on the head, "and here's one to buy some milk for the baby." Johnny rose with glad eagerness, the baby in his arms and the pennies in his hand. "I shall buy 'specks' with mine," he cried joyfully. "What's 'specks?'" asked Ned, puzzled, as the children went off, the elder staggering under his burden. "'Specks!' Damaged fruit, half rotten. The garbage of the rich sold as a feast to these poor little ones?" cried Nellie, a hot anger in her face and voice that made Ned dumb.