Hidden Hand. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

exclaimed Old Hurricane, gazing in consternation from the young prisoner to the accuser; "what—what! my newsboy, my saucy little prince of patches, a girl in boy's clothes?"

      "Yes, sir—a young scoundrel! I actually twigged him selling papers at the Fulton Ferry this morning! A little rascal!"

      "A girl in boy's clothes! A girl!" exclaimed Old Hurricane, with his eyes nearly starting out of his head.

      Just then the young culprit looked up in his face with an expression half melancholy, half mischievous, that appealed to the rugged heart of the old man. Turning around to the policeman, he startled the whole office by roaring out:

      "Girl, is she, sir? Then, demmy, sir, whether a girl in boy's clothes, or men's clothes, or soldier's clothes, or sailor's clothes, or any clothes, or no clothes, sir, treat her with the delicacy due to womanhood, sir! ay, and the tenderness owed to childhood! for she is but a bit of a poor, friendless, motherless, fatherless child, lost and wandering in your great Babylon! No more hard words to her, sir—or by the ever-lasting——"

      "Order!" put in the calm and dignified Recorder.

      Old Hurricane, though his face was still purple, his veins swollen and his eyeballs glaring with anger, immediately recovered himself, turned and bowed to the Recorder and said:

      "Yes, sir, I will keep order, if you'll make that brute of a policeman reform his language!"

      And so saying Old Hurricane subsided into a seat immediately behind the child, to watch the examination.

      "What'll they do with her, do you think?" he inquired of a bystander.

      "Send her down, in course."

      "Down! Where?"

      "To Blackwell's Island—to the work'us, in course."

      "To the workhouse—her, that child?—the wretches! Um-m-m-me! Oh-h-h!" groaned Old Hurricane, stooping and burying his shaggy gray head in his great hands.

      He felt his shoulder touched, and, looking up, saw that the little prisoner had turned around, and was about to speak to him.

      "Governor," said the same clear voice that he had even at first supposed to belong to a girl—"Governor, don't you keep on letting out that way! You don't know nothing! You're in the Recorder's Court! If you don't mind your eye they'll commit you for contempt!"

      "Will they? Then they'll do well, my lad! Lass, I mean. I plead guilty to contempt. Send a child like you to the——! They shan't do it! Simply, they shan't do it! I, Major Warfield of Virginia, tell you so, my boy—girl, I mean!"

      "But, you innocent old lion, instead of freeing me, you'll find yourself shut up between four walls! and very narrow ones at that, I tell you! You'll think yourself in your coffin! Governor, they call it The Tombs!" whispered the child.

      "Attention!" said the clerk.

      The little prisoner turned and faced the court. And the "old lion" buried his shaggy, gray head and beard in his hands and groaned aloud.

      "Now, then, what is your name, my lad—my girl, I should say?" inquired the clerk.

      "Capitola, sir."

      Old Hurricane pricked up his ears and raised his head, muttering to himself: "Cap-it-o-la! That's a very odd name! Can't surely be two in the world of the same! Cap-it-ola!—if it should be my Capitola, after all! I shouldn't wonder at all! I'll listen and say nothing." And with this wise resolution, Old Hurricane again dropped his head upon his hands.

      "You say your name is Capitola—Capitola what?" inquired the clerk, continuing the examination.

      "Nothing sir."

      "Nothing! What do you mean?"

      "I have no name but Capitola, sir."

      "Who is your father?"

      "Never had any that I know, sir."

      "Your mother?"

      "Never had a mother either, sir, as ever I heard."

      "Where do you live?"

      "About in spots in the city, sir."

      "Oh—oh—oh!" groaned old Hurricane within his hands.

      "What is your calling?" inquired the clerk.

      "Selling newspapers, carrying portmanteaus and packages sweeping before doors, clearing off snow, blacking boots and so on."

      "Little odd jobs in general, eh?"

      "Yes, sir, anything that I can turn my hand to and get to do."

      "Boy—girl, I should say—what tempted you to put yourself into male attire?"

      "Sir?"

      "In boy's clothes, then?"

      "Oh, yes; want, sir—and—and—danger, sir!" cried the little prisoner, putting her hands to a face crimson with blushes and for the first time since her arrest upon the eve of sobbing.

      "Oh—oh—oh!" groaned Old Hurricane from his chair.

      "Want? Danger? How is that?" continued the clerk.

      "Your honor mightn't like to know."

      "By all means! It is, in fact, necessary that you should give an account of yourself," said the clerk.

      Old Hurricane once more raised his head, opened his ears and gave close attention.

      One circumstance he had particularly remarked—the language used by the poor child during her examination was much superior to the slang she had previously affected, to support her assumed character of newsboy.

      "Well, well—why do you pause? Go on—go on, my good boy—girl, I mean I" said the Recorder, in a tone of kind encouragement.

CHAPTER VI.

       Table of Contents

A SHORT, SAD STORY.

       Table of Contents

      "Ah! poverty is a weary thing!

       It burdeneth the brain,

       It maketh even the little child

       To murmur and complain."

      "It is not much I have to tell," began Capitola. "I was brought up in Rag Alley and its neighborhood by an old woman named Nancy Grewell."

      "Ah!" ejaculated Old Hurricane.

      "She was a washwoman, and rented one scantily furnished room from a poor family named Simmons."

      "Oh!" cried Old Hurricane.

      "Granny, as I called her, was very good to me, and I never suffered cold nor hunger until about eighteen months ago, when Granny took it into her head to go down to Virginia."

      "Umph!" exclaimed Old Hurricane.

      "When Granny went away she left me a little money and some good clothes and told me to be sure to stay with the people where she left me, for that she would be back in about a month. But, your honor, that was the last I ever saw or heard of poor Granny! She never came back again. And by that I know she must have died."

      "Ah-h-h!" breathed the old man, puffing fast.

      "The first month or two after Granny left I did well enough. And then, when the little money was all gone, I eat with the Simmonses and did little odd jobs for my food. But by and by Mr. Simmons got out of work, and the family fell into want, and they wished me to go out and beg for them. I just couldn't do that, and so they told me I should look out for myself."

      "Were