Mlle. Fouchette.

by Charles Theodore Murray.

CHAPTER I

"Get along, you little beast!"

Madame Podvin accompanied her admonition with a vigorous blow from her heavy hand.

"Out, I say!"

Thump.

"You lazy caniche!"

Thump.

"You get no breakfast here this morning!"

Thump.

"Out with you!"

Thump.

In the mean time the unhappy object of these objurgations and blows had been rapidly propelled towards the open door, and was with a final thump knocked into the street.

A stray dog? Oh, no; a dog is never abused in this way in Paris. It would probably cause a riot.

It was only a wee bit of a child,--dirty, clothed in rags, with tangled blonde hair that had never, apparently, seen a comb, and whose little bare feet and thin ankles were incrusted with the dried filth of the gutters.

Being only a child, the few neighbors who were abroad at that early hour merely grinned at her as she picked herself up and limped away without a cry or a word.

"She's a tough one," muttered a witness.

"She's got to be mighty tough to stand the Podvin," responded another.

In the rapidly increasing distance the child seemed to justify these remarks; for she began to step out nimbly towards the town of Charenton without wasting time over her grievances.

"All the same, I'm hungry," she said to herself, "and the streets of Charenton will be mighty poor picking half an hour hence."

She paused presently to examine a pile of garbage in front of a house.

But the dogs had been there before her,--there was nothing to eat there.

These piles of garbage awaited the tour of the carts; they began to appear at an early hour in the morning, and within an hour had been picked over by rag-pickers, dogs, and vagrants until absolutely nothing was left that could be by any possibility utilized by these early investigators. Here and there two or three dogs contested the spoils of a promising pile, to separate with watchful amity to gnaw individual bones.

As it was a princ.i.p.al highway from the Porte de Charenton to the town, the piles of refuse had been pretty thoroughly overhauled by the dogs and human sc.u.m that infested the barrier.

Finally, the girl stopped as a stout woman appeared at a grille with a paper of kitchen refuse which she was about to throw into the street.

They looked at each other steadily,--the child with eager, hungry eyes; the woman with resentment.

"There is nothing here for you," rasped the latter, retaining her hold upon the folded parcel as she advanced to the curb and glanced up and down the street.

The child, who had unconsciously carried her rag-picker's hook, stood waiting in the middle of the road.

"Don't you hear me?" repeated the woman, threateningly. "Be off with you!"

"It is a public road," said the little one.

"You beggar----"

"I haven't asked you for anything, madame," interrupted the child, with quivering voice,--"I'd die before asking you for anything,--but I have as much right to the road as you."

There was a flash of defiance in the small blue eyes now.

Two street dogs came up on a run. The woman threw down her parcel to them and, retreating, slammed the iron gate after her.

With a wicked swing of her hook the child drove the dogs away and hastily inspected the garbage. A piece of stale crust and some half-decayed fruit rewarded her. A gristled end of beef she threw to the dogs, that watched her wistfully a few yards away.

"Voila! I divide fair, messieurs," said she, skilfully munching the sound spots out of the fruit and casting the rest on the ground.

"One would have thought madame was about to spread a banquet," she muttered.

She sauntered away, stopping to break the crust with a piece of loose paving, with a sharp eye out for other windfalls.

A young girl saw her from a garden, and shyly peeped through the high wrought-iron fence at the little savage.

Though the latter never stopped a second in her process of mastication, she eyed the other quite as curiously,--something as she might have regarded a strange but beautiful animal through the bars of its cage.

In experience and practical knowledge of life the respective ages of these two might have been reversed; the child of the street been sixteen instead of twelve.

Undersized, thin, sallow, and sunburned,--bareheaded, barefooted, dirty, and ragged,--she formed a striking contrast to the rosy-cheeked, plump, full-lipped, and well-dressed young woman within.

The extraordinary sound of crunching very naturally attracted the first attention of the elder.

"What in the world is that which you are eating, child?" she asked.

"Bread, ma'm'selle."

"Bread! Why, it's covered with dirt!"

"Yes, ma'm'selle."

Redoubled exertion of the sound young teeth.

"Why do you eat that?"