She had often noticed the ragged child, with her pale, starved face and large, wistful eyes, passing in and out of this miserable woman's den, sometimes going to the liquor-shops and sometimes to the nearest policy-office to spend for her mother, if such the woman really was, the money she had gained by begging.
With a sudden impulse, as a deep wail and a more piteous cry for mercy smote upon her ears, Pinky sprang across the street and into the hovel.
The sight that met her eyes left no hesitation in her mind.

Holding up with one strong arm the naked body of the poor child--she had drawn the clothes over her head--the infuriated woman was raining down blows from a short piece of rattan upon the quivering flesh, already covered with welts and bruises.
"Devil!" cried Pinky as she rushed upon this fiend in human shape and snatched the little girl from her arm.

"Do you want to kill the child ?" She might almost as well have assaulted a tigress.
The woman was larger, stronger, more desperate and more thoroughly given over to evil passions than she.

To thwart her in anything was to rouse her into a fury.

A moment she stood in surprise and bewilderment; in the next, and ere Pinky had time to put herself on guard, she had sprung upon her with a passionate cry that sounded more like that of a wild beast than anything human.