zigzag scratch under her, as she shot down the dark, polished rail.

A crowd of children had stopped on the curbstone in front of the
house, shivering a little in the pale autumn sunshine, but laughing
and pushing each other as they gathered closer around the man with the
hand-organ. As the wheezy notes were ground out, the man unwound the
rope that was coiled around his wrist, and bade the monkey at the
other end of it step out and dance.

"Come on, Dago! Come shake hands with the other monkey!" the children
cried. But I shrank back as far as possible, clinging to Phil's neck.
Not for a fortune would I have touched the miserable little animal
crouching on the organ. She might have been Matches's own sister, from
her resemblance to her. She belonged to the same species, I am sure,
and whenever they held me near her I shrieked and scolded so fiercely
that Phil finally said that I shouldn't be teased.

The man who held the string was a hard master. One could plainly see
that. He had a dark, cruel face, and he jerked the rope and swore at
her in Italian whenever she stopped dancing, which she did every few
seconds. He had started on his rounds early, in order to attract as
many children as possible before school-time, and I doubt if the poor
little thing had had any breakfast. She was sick besides. She would
dance a few steps and then cower down and tremble, and look at him so
appealingly, that only a brute could have had the heart to strike her
as he did. When he found that all his jerking was in vain, he gave her
several hard blows with the other end of the rope. At that she
staggered up and began to dance again, but it was not long until she
was huddled down on the curbstone as before, shaking as if with a
chill.