I've seen this question before, thus appealing to the correlation between ideas, "aroma" is a distinctive smell, then it would match with <em>pungent</em> <em>(which describes a sharply smell)</em> typical of spices; and the rest of the context matches with either: <em>"urchin"</em>, <em>"waif"</em> or <em>"homeless"</em>. Thereby is fair to say: <em>"A pungent aroma..."</em> and <em>"hungry waif into the alley"</em>