"If you won't, you won't;" and she tossed the helpless thing as she would have tossed a senseless bundle over upon the heap of straw that served as a bed, adding, as she did so, "I never coaxed my own brats." The baby did not cry.

Mother Hewitt then blew out the candle, and groping her way to the door of the cellar that opened on the street, went out, shutting down the heavy door behind her, and leaving the child alone in that dark and noisome den--alone in its foul and wet garments, but, thanks to kindly drugs, only partially conscious of its misery.
Mother Hewitt's first visit was to the nearest dram-shop.

Here she spent for liquor five cents of the money she had received.

From the dram-shop she went to Sam McFaddon's policy-office.

This was not hidden away, like most of the offices, in an upper room or a back building or in some remote cellar, concealed from public observation, but stood with open door on the very street, its customers going in and out as freely and unquestioned as the customers of its next-door neighbor, the dram-shop.
Policemen passed Sam's door a hundred times in every twenty-four hours, saw his customers going in and out, knew their errand, talked with Sam about his business, some of them trying their luck occasionally after there had been an exciting "hit," but none reporting him or in any way interfering with his unlicensed plunder of the miserable and besotted wretches that crowded his neighborhood.
From the whisky-shop to the policy-shop went Mother Hewitt.