Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

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Instantly I was beside her, bowing, hat in hand:

“I beg your pardon, madam; won’t you let me help you?”

She drew back and looked at me perplexed, and I could see the gathering alarm in her wide, innocent, serious eyes.

SHE DREW BACK AND LOOKED AT ME PERPLEXED.

“Oh, no, thanks!” she said, and I knew that all that she had ever heard of bunco-steerers and of the wily crafts of the town was mingling in terrifying confusion in her mind with thoughts of possible escape.

My distress was as great as her own. I had forgotten for the moment how dismaying to a woman must be an unexpected offer of service from a sudden apparition of full grown, masculine, street poverty. I felt guilty as though I had wantonly frightened a child. A parcel had fallen to the ground. I picked it up, and returned it to her with an apology most spontaneous and sincere. But as I turned away in haste to escape from the embarrassment of the situation, I found myself checked to my great surprise by a timid question: “Perhaps you can tell me the shortest way to number — La Salle Street?” she said.