The path wound past the Great Train Robbery and to the Sunny South, a long sheltered arcade featuring games of chance. He stopped to observe a black-haired girl manipulating the Digger Claw crane, attempting to pick up a Kewpie doll inside a glass vitrine. She looked about twelve, maybe slightly older—she wore a child’s dress, faded red-and-blue calico, but the blouse strained against her bosom. Her black lace-up boots were scuffed and almost certainly too small for her.

A crowd of younger children watched her eagerly. Any accompanying adults had no doubt headed to the roulette wheel. The crane’s jaws held the doll poised just above the slot, but the girl cranked the handle too quickly. The doll fell and landed beside the chute, and the crane froze in place.

“Bad luck, Gilda!” a boy exclaimed. “You got another nickel?”

She shook her head in disappointment. “No. You?”

“Nah.” Shrugging, the boy walked off. The other children continued to stare at the girl, Gilda, as though waiting for her to prove herself a liar and produce a nickel. But after a bit of bantering among themselves, they, too, dispersed to other parts of the arcade.

He waited to see if Gilda joined them. When she didn’t, he stepped over and dug into his pocket.

“Will this help?”

He held out a nickel. The girl grabbed it, barely looking at him. “Hey, thanks, Mister!”

She turned back to the game and slid the nickel into the coin slot. He stood behind her, nodding as she turned the crank.

“You need to do it more slowly,” he said. He took her hand lightly in his own. “Like this.”

A moment of resistance, and then he felt her hand relax as he guided her. The crane’s jaws closed around the doll, and he moved the controls a fraction of an inch, squeezing them so that the metal jaws opened at just the right instant and the Kewpie dropped down the chute.

“I got it!” Gilda snatched the celluloid doll from the tray. She turned and beamed up at him. “Thanks, Mister!”

She had a pretty face, large dark eyes and a small mouth, baby fat in her cheeks and chin, crooked front teeth. A dimple—he’d never found a doll that had one. Her black hair hung in a thick braid halfway down her back, tied with a scrap of red grosgrain ribbon. She smelled of sun and dirt, like newly turned earth in a garden.

“Where’d your friends go?” He looked around, scanning the arcade.

“Oh, they just ran off.” A lisp made her sound younger than she was. “They’re stupid.”

“Not nice to leave you alone,” he agreed.

“Oh, who cares?” She raised and lowered her shoulders in an exaggerated show of unconcern. “They’re just kids.”

“Did your parents leave you in charge of them?”