CHAPTER I.

"THREE ON A DOORSTEP."


In a poor part of London, but not in the very poorest part--two
children sat on a certain autumn evening, side by side on a doorstep.
The eldest might have been ten, the youngest eight. The eldest was a
girl, the youngest a boy. Drawn up in front of these children,
looking into their little faces with hungry, loving, pathetic eyes,
lay a mongrel dog.

The three were alone, for the street in which they sat was a cul-de-sac
--leading nowhere; and at this hour, on this Sunday evening,
seemed quite deserted. The boy and girl were no East End waifs; they
were clean; they looked respectable; and the doorstep which gave them
a temporary resting-place belonged to no far-famed Stepney or Poplar.
It stood in a little, old-fashioned, old-world court, back of
Bloomsbury. They were a foreign-looking little pair--not in their
dress, which was truly English in its clumsiness and want of
picturesque coloring--but their faces were foreign. The contour was
peculiar, the setting of the two pairs of eyes--un-Saxon. They sat
very close together, a grave little couple. Presently the girl threw
her arm round the boy's neck, the boy laid his head on her shoulder.
In this position those who watched could have traced motherly lines
round this little girl's firm mouth. She was a creature to defend and
protect. The evening fell and the court grew dark, but the boy had
found shelter on her breast, and the dog, coming close, laid his head
on her lap.