It was the word that came most naturally to his lips.
Andy, who was sitting where a few sunbeams came in through a rent in the wall, with the warm light on his head, turned and looked into the bleared but friendly eyes gazing at him so earnestly.
"I'm going out, baby.

Will you stay here till I come back ?" "Yes," answered the child, "I'll stay." "I won't be gone very long, and I'll bring you an apple and something good for dinner." Andy's face lit up and his eyes danced.
"Don't go out until I come back.

Somebody might carry you off, and then I couldn't give you the nice red apple." "I'll stay right here," said Andy, in a positive tone.
"And won't go into the street till I come back ?" "No, I won't." Andy knit his brows and closed his lips firmly.
"All right, little one," answered the man, in a cheery sort of voice that was so strange to his own ears that it seemed like the voice of somebody else.
Still, he could not feel satisfied.

He was living in the midst of thieves to whom the most insignificant thing upon which they could lay their hands was booty.

Children who had learned to be hard and cruel thronged the court, and he feared, if he left Andy alone in the hovel, that it would not only be robbed of its meagre furniture, but the child subjected to ill-treatment.