Jacob A. Riis 1849–1914. The Battle with the Slum. 1902.
Page 447
| along herself. All the way down the bird passed muffled comments on the Metropolitan Railway service and on its captivity, to the considerable embarrassment of its keeper; but they reached the Beach Street tenement and Mrs. Ben Wah’s attic at last. There Mrs. McCutcheon stowed it carefully away in a corner, while she busied herself about her aged friend. |
| She was working slowly down through an address which she had designed to break the thing gently and by degrees, when the parrot, extending a feeler on its own hook, said “K-r-r-a-a!” behind its paper screen. |
| Mrs. Ben Wah sat up straight and looked fixedly at the corner. Seeing the big bundle there, she went over and peered into it. She caught a quick breath and stared, wide-eyed. |
| “Where you get that bird?” she demanded of Mrs. McCutcheon, faintly. |
| “Oh, that is Mr. Riis’s bird,” said that lady, sparring for time; “a friend gave it to him—” |
| “Where you take him?” Mrs. Ben Wah gasped, her hand pressed against her feeble old heart. |
| Her friend saw, and gave right up. |
| “I am not going to take it anywhere,” she said. “I brought it for you. This is to be its home, and you are to be its mother, grandma, and its friend. You are to be always together from now on— |