"Your sister? "

It was impossible to describe the look on the Man in Tweed's face as she spared him a glance. If pressed, she would have said it looked like a fly had just landed on his nose. The cross-eyed gaze nearly made the perfect image of a distraught, little girl shatter as Charley did her best to keep her expression steady. Cry, she willed herself, blinking back to the ground a few times in earnest.

"Uh-huh," Charley sniffed, drawing out the story as best she could. If pausing on words helped her enunciate them better, it also might convince the man she was truly struggling with them. "She wanted me to hold her place in line, but then she wandered off to look for our grandmama's broach. She looks for it every time we come, and she always comes back. Except..."

If the man understood, he gave no outward sign of sympathy toward the urchin's made-up distress. Charley was sure it wasn't that he didn't believe her. She bit down harder on her lip, and when the sob shuddered up through her chest, it was very real to her as well. The sound was loud to her reddened ears —but then what part of her wasn't red?— and nearly made her miss the soft sigh coming from the Man in Tweed.

"Oh, alright," the words were clipped and short, though Charley wasn't hearing that part. She heard agreement and took refuge in it, turning glistening eyes toward the Man in Tweed. Just because she didn't happen to believe her own story doesn't mean she couldn't feel reassurance from the answer. "What does your sister look like? "

Charley took a moment to wipe her eyes, and it wasn't because she needed to sell her story. "Well, she's about this high..." The well-dressed urchin held a hand several inches above her head, right at the shoulder of the man. "And she's—oh!"

The bump from behind sent the dressed-up girl careening into the Man in Tweed. Her hands flew out to catch herself, and some small, clever part of her thought to spread one wide toward his carried book. Charley let out a grunt as the man caught her, springing back only after a thoughtless, too-long delay for the properness of a girl her age in a dress. She never needed properness like that in britches.

The Man in Tweed, for his part, seemed far too preoccupied by checking his jostled book to notice the break in character. Only when he had been assured of its presence did he check on her, "Are you quite alright, Miss?"

"There she is!" Charley announced, but she was clinging to the man's arm instead of flying into the oddly-timed arms of Hestia. The woman's face was known around town as the Hog's Head barkeeper, and better-known among the street children as a friend when in need. And right now, Charley had quite a need for a friend like Hestia. "Oh thank you, mister, thank you!"

She tugged on his arm, drawing his gaze for a moment before it focused instead on Hestia. "I trust you'll keep a better eye on your sister from now on? "

The Man in Tweed should have kept a better eye on the book Charley's small fingers were slipping gently from his arm.

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