"Y-your w-what?" he growled.
"My work, sir, at the theatre."
"Good Lord!" he groaned, "and t-that crawlin' r-reptile couldn't let you
pass, you poor little soul, you!"
Upon my word, I thought he was going to weep over me. Next moment he
turned his collar up with a violence that nearly upset him, and
exclaimed: "D-don't you be a-fraid. I'll see you safely home. G-go by
yourself? not much you won't! I'll take you to your mother. S-say,
you've got a mother, haven't you? Yes, that's right; every girl's worth
anythin's got a mother. I-I'll take you to her, sure; receive maternal
thanks, a-and all that. Oh, say, boys! look here!" he shouted, and
holding out the big cane in front of me to prevent my passing, he called
to him two other men, who slowly and with almost superhuman caution were
negotiating the snowy steps.
"Say, Colonel! Judge! come here and help me p-pr'tect this un-fortunate
child." The Judge at that moment sat heavily and unintentionally down on
the bottom step, and the Colonel remarked pleasantly, though a trifle
vaguely, "T-that's the time he hit it"; while the fallen man asked
calmly from his snowy seat, "P-pr-protect what--f-from who?"
"This poor ch-i-ld from raging beasts and in-famous scoundrels, Judge,"
remarked my bombastic friend.
"We're gentlemen, my dear; and say, get the Judge up, Colonel, and start
him, and we'll _all_ see her safe home. Damn shame, a la-dy can't walk
in safety, w-without 'er body of able-bodied cit-zens to protect her!
Com'er long, now, child." And he grasped my arm and pushed me gently
forward.
The Colonel tipped his hat over one eye, gave a military salute, and
wavered back and forth. The Judge muttered something about "Honest woman
against city of New York," and something "and costs," and both fell to
the rear.
And thus escorted by all these intoxicated old gallants, I made my
mortified way up the avenue, they wobbling and sliding and stammering,
and he who held my arm, I distinctly remember, recited Byron to me, and
told me many times that the Judge was "a p-perfect gentleman, and so was
his wife."
This startling statement was delivered just as we reached Thirty-second
Street. Like an eel I slipped from his grasp, and whirling about, I said
as rapidly as I could speak, "I'm almost home now. I can see the light
from here, and I can't take you any farther out of your way," and I
darted down the darker street.
Looking back from my own stoop, I saw the three kindly old sinners
making salutations at the corner. My bombastic friend and the Judge had
their hats off, waving them, and the Colonel saluted with such rigid
propriety, it seems a pity that he was facing the wrong way.
I laugh, oh, yes, I laugh at the memory, until I think how silvery were
these three wine-muddled old heads, and then I feel "the pity, oh, the
pity of it!"
_CHAPTER XVIII