I turned into the street and went on, but I went to the next corner before I stopped.
"Which way do you live?" I said.
"This way?" I pointed down the street.
She just looked at me. "Do you live over that way?
I bet you live close to the station, where the trains are.
Dont you?" She just looked at me, serene and secret and chewing.
The street was empty both ways, with quiet lawns and houses neat among the trees, but no one at all except back there.
We turned and went back.
Two men sat in chairs in front of a store.
"Do you all know this little girl?
She sort of took up with me and I cant find where she lives."
They quit looking at me and looked at her.
"Must be one of them new Italian families," one said. He wore a rusty frock coat. "I've seen her before.
What's your name, little girl?" looked at them blackly for a while, her jaws moving steadily.
She swallowed without ceasing to chew.
"Maybe she cant speak English," the other said.
"They sent her after bread," I said. "She must be able to speak something."
"What's your pa's name?" the first said. "Pete?
Joe? name John huh?"
She took another bite from the bun.
"What must I do with her?" I said. "She just follows me.
I've got to get back to Boston."
"You from the college?"
"Yes, sir.
And I've got to get on back."
"You might go up the street and turn her over to Anse.
He'll be up at the livery stable. The marshal."
"I reckon that's what I'll have to do," I said. "I've got to do something with her.
Much obliged.
Come on, sister."
We went up the street, on the shady side, where the shadow of the broken facade blotted slowly across the road.
We came to the livery stable.
The marshal wasn't there.
A man sitting in a chair tilted in the broad low door, where a dark cool breeze smelling of ammonia blew among the ranked stalls, said to look at the postoffice.
He didn't know her either.
"Them furriners. I cant tell one from another.
You might take her across the tracks where they live, and maybe somebody'll claim her."
We went to the postoflice. It was back down the street.
The man in the frock coat was opening a newspaper.
"Anse just drove out of town," he said. "I guess you'd better go down past the station and walk past them houses by the river.
Somebody there'll know her."
"I guess I'll have to," I said. "Come on, sister." She pushed the last piece of the bun into her mouth and swallowed it. "Want another?" I said.
She looked at me, chewing, her eyes black and unwinking and friendly.
I took the other two buns out and gave her one and bit into the other.
I asked a man where the station was and he showed me.
"Come on, sister."
We reached the station and crossed the tracks, where the river was.
A bridge crossed it, and a street of jumbled frame houses followed the river, backed onto it.
A shabby street, but with an air heterogeneous and vivid too.
In the center of an untrimmed plot enclosed by a fence of gaping and broken pickets stood an ancient lopsided surrey and a weathered house from an upper window of which hung a garment of vivid pink.