SHE wasn't in the least bit pretty, romantic, or interesting. She was ugly, ragged, half starved, and dirty; in age about ten — though she didn't know it ; by heritage and habit a genuine London Arab. Her father and mother were costers, of the New Cut. When she was born, her mother's bed was a scrap of old sacking. Her father was a "Saturday-nighter" — that is to say, he got drunk every Saturday night, beginning at midnight ; for up to that time he sold "eysters" in the streets of Lambeth. Her mother, when sober, which was unfrequent, sold flowers. She died when her luckless child was about seven years old — a knock on the head in a row with her husband. Six months for the husband.
When he came out of prison he took to himself another partner, and that lady promptly kicked out of doors the little ragamuffin, who, during her father's imprisonment, had been fed by one neighbour and another, or had picked up what she could in the streets. She did not know her name, and nobody else knew it. The only "necessities" her parents recognised were "beer and vittles"; baptism was a luxury. They had called the child any name that came uppermost — generally an abusive one. Her street companions called her " Tater" from some real or fancied resemblance of her head to that tuber ; and as Tater she lived, and moved, and had her being — such a being as thousands have in all great capitals. She slept in odd comers, or in the passages, or on the stairs of the tenement houses, the doors of which are open all night. Sometimes she curled up on one of the benches of Vauxhall or Waterloo Bridge, and if "chivied" from there, sought a shadowy doorstep, or some nook which might escape the searching light and the keen eye of the " slop," who is the natural enemy of the street child.
Tater did not steal, because she was afraid of the " beak." She had no moral objection to annex anything that didn't belong to her. She lied more often than she spoke the truth. She fought frequently and fiercely, using hands, feet, and teeth ; and was regarded by the young gentlemen of the streets as a formidable opponent. She swore as much as they did ; she could shy stones as unerringly. She was passionate, sullen, and revengeful. It would be difficult to say that she had any good qualities; there was no difficulty at all in deciding that she had an ample crop of bad ones. She couldn't read, and didn't want to learn. She sneered at the school children ; called them names, and, if she got a safe chance, threw mud at them when "they was rigged up smart." She liked hopscotch, marbles, and any gambling game — some of these were played with stones and bits of wood and paper — and cheated whenever she could. If discovered, she was "whacked," and as she always hit back with a will, the result was a hot encounter, in which, in most cases, Tater scored. Her food was as scanty as her apparel. Breakfast was literally the breaking of a fast. Tater never had a meal. Sometimes a 'doorstep' was all she ate in the twenty-four hours ; or a few potatoes. Occasionally, she was able to treat herself to "a 'ayporth o' pudden," which meant a slab of dough pudding; if it was a day old she got a double allowance for her halfpenny. Her highest ideal of felicity was "pudden an' treacle an' a thrip'ny doss." She had twice enjoyed the first — once, in a fit of wild extravagance, paying for it herself, and starving severely for it afterwards, and once treated by a benevolent 'busman off duty, who saw her flattening her nose on the window of a " pudden " shop in Drury Lane. But the other ingredient of a perfect paradise — ■ thrip'ny doss" — Tater had never enjoyed ; she only pictured it from the glowing account of wealthy " kids " who had revelled in that expensive luxury. The nearest approach to a bed Tater had ever known was the bit of sacking she slept on "at 'ome."
Tater sometimes played with toys, and she once possessed a doll. You wouldn't have known it was a doll unless you were told, and then you had to take it on faith, as Tater herself did. Tater loved that doll with an intense and passionate adoration. She nearly got killed defending its life, and she avenged its death tragically. The doll was simply a roll of newspaper, with a dirty old kerchief pinned round it to represent an entire wardrobe. But Tater believed in that doll, which she called 'Meliar. She nursed it, kissed it, sang to it, talked to it, slept with it in her arms, defended it again and again from unprovoked assaults.
One day an unsympathetic gamin, who had sold his last "speshul Ecker," encountered Tater_ and her doll at the witching hour of midnight in the Strand. Tater's hours of retirement, like her meals, were irregular. The " Ecker " boy made a disparaging remark on the personal appearance of 'Meliar, and at the same moment grabbed at her. Tater retorted with a whoop and a blow. The "Ecker" boy snatched 'Meliar and dashed across the road. Tater, following swiftly, was as nearly as possible run down by an omnibus. In a twinkling she had caught up with the abductor of ■Meliar in Burleigh Street, and then followed a fierce tussle, in the course of which 'Meliar and her multum-in-fayvor wardrobe were wrecked. Tater, mad with rage and grief, " went for" the " Ecker " boy, routed him, and then, panting and sobbing, sought for the fragments of 'Meliar and her frock. Having discovered some, a good deal mixed up with mud, she sat down on the kerb to bewail its untimely death. Being presently "spotted" and duly "chivied" by a policeman, she retreated, carrying with her the remains of 'Meliar, which were buried in a little heap of dust in a back yard.
One of Tater's greatest delights, in the hot weather, was to paddle in the muddy country were represented by a mud puddle in the murky river at Lambeth. She " went out of town " among the barges and the slime ; and, standing in the water, acquired the only stockings she had ever worn — a thick coating of greasy mud. Presently, her attention was diverted to a tiny ragamuffin of three or four years old — who, unattended by any older companion, was paddling in the water at low tide on the Surrey bank of the river ; and one evening in late July she chanced to be indulging in this recreation with some other girls and a few very little boys. At this season town is declared "empty," all lucky people having departed to moor or forest, lake or river; but Tater had never seen anything more countrified than a London parK, and she very seldom saw that. It is open to question whether she would have been able to give a cow its right name. To her all the delights of the
" Say you there, Neddie Grimes, look out or you'll git drownded," called Tater. Neddie Grimes shouted back, "Yah ! "and continued to splash up the black mud, going a little further out into the water, in sheer defiance. In an impulse of benevolence, Tater ran forward to pull the child out of possible danger; but before she could reach him, Neddie Grimes threw up his hands with a scream. He had lost his footing. The children on the bank echoed the scream in shrill chorus ; but not an instant did Tater hesitate. She dashed straight into the river after the poor baby, and succeeded in clutching his ragged frock ; but even as she did so, the water caught her, and swept both her and her prize out towards the mid-stream, Tater uttered a cry of terror, but kept her hold on the child's garment till, suddenly, it gave way, and Neddie Grimes and his rescuer were parted. A bargeman, attracted by the screaming of the children on the bank, seized a long boat-hook, and, running to the side of his barge, tried to reach the drowning children. He managed to catch hold of Neddy Grimes, and soon handed the child, apparently dead, to his mate, who ran off with it to the nearest surgery. Then two men, who had hurried down to the bank, put out in a boat after Tater. She had disappeared, but presently came partly to the surface again, floating down on the ebb tide. The rowers soon came up with her, and one of them lifted her aboard.
" Dead as a door-nail, poor little beggar," said he, apathetically. But he laid her down gently enough in the bottom of the boat, and they rowed back quickly.
" Quite dead," was the surgeon's verdict when Tater was laid out on a rough table for examination. Neddie Grimes had suffered little beyond a drenching and a fright. Perhaps Tater's lot was a happier one, considering the almost inevitable future of such children. The poor, skinny little corpse was removed to the workhouse to await an inquest. Tater, could she know it, would have thought it grand to be " inquiched." The Guardians made an effort to find someone who could be made to pay for the burial, but failed. Two girls were hunted up by the police, who gave different versions at the inquest of how Tater had got out of her depth, though both had been onlookers of the occurrence. So it was not very clear whether the poor little ragamuffin committed an act of heroism or was merely the victim of accident. Thus she was robbed of even posthumous fame ; but posthumous fame is one of the things which are valueless to the owner, and Tater had no surviving friends and relations to cherish her memory. She was buried by the parish, in a grave already nearly filled with paupers. Nameless, homeless, friendless, in life and in death, she sleeps none the less soundly, and needs no pity now. It is not death, but life, that is terrible to such as Tater.
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