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Title: The Angel of the Tenement


Author: George Madden Martin



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THE ANGEL OF THE TENEMENT

by

GEORGE MADDEN MARTIN








[Illustration]



New York
Bonnell, Silver & Co.
1897

Copyright by
Bonnell, Silver & Co.,
1897.




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER                                                   PAGE

       I. The Advent of the Angel                                1

      II. The Entertainers of the Angel                         16

     III. Introduces the Little Major                           26

      IV. The Angel Becomes a Fairy                             37

       V. The Angel Rescues Mr. Tomlin                          55

      VI. The Major Superintends the Angel's Education          72

     VII. Miss Ruth makes the Acquaintance of Old G. A. R.      90

    VIII. The Angel meets an old Friend                         99

      IX. Mary Carew is Tempted                                111

       X. The Major Obeys Orders                               122

      XI. Tells of the Tenement's Christmas                    125




THE ANGEL OF THE TENEMENT.




CHAPTER I.

THE ADVENT OF THE ANGEL.


The ladies of the Tenement felt that it was a matter concerning the
reputation of the house. Therefore on this particular hot July morning
they were gathered in the apartment of Miss Mary Carew and Miss Norma
Bonkowski, if one small and dingy room may be so designated, and were
putting the matter under discussion.

Miss Carew, tall, bony, and more commonly known to the Tenement as Miss
C'rew, of somewhat tart and acrid temper, being pressed for her version
of the story, paused in her awkward and intent efforts at soothing the
beautiful, fair-haired child upon her lap and explained that she was
stepping out her door that morning with her water-bucket, thinking to
get breakfast ready before Miss Bonkowski awoke, when a child's
frightened crying startled her, coming from a room across the hall which
for some weeks had been for rent.

"At that," continued Miss Carew, moved to unwonted loquacity, and
patting the child industriously while she addressed the circle of
listening ladies, "at that, 'sure as life!' says I, and stepped across
and opened the door, an' there, settin' on this shawl, its eyes big like
it had jus' waked up, an' cryin' like to break its heart, was this here
baby. I picked her right up an' come an' woke Norma, but it's nothin' we
can make out, 'ceptin' she's been in that there room all night."

Many were the murmurs and ejaculations from the circle of wondering
ladies, while Miss Bonkowski, a frowzy-headed lady in soiled shirt waist
and shabby skirt, with a small waist and shoulders disproportionately
broad; and with, moreover, a dab of paint upon each high-boned
cheek,--nothing daunted by previous failures, leaned forward and putting
a somewhat soiled finger beneath the child's pretty chin, inquired
persuasively, "And isn't the darling going to tell its Norma its name?"

Miss Bonkowski spoke airily and as if delivering a part. But this the
good ladies forgave, for was not this same Miss Norma the flower that
shed an odor of distinction over the social blossoming of the whole
Tenement? Was not Miss Bonkowski a chorus lady at The Garden Opera
House?

So her audience looked on approvingly while Miss Norma snapped her
fingers and chirruped to the baby encouragingly. "And what is the
darling's name?" she repeated.

The little one, her pitiful sobbing momentarily arrested, regarded Miss
Bonkowski with grave wonder. "Didn't a know I are Angel?" she returned
in egotistical surprise.

"Sure an' it's the truth she's spakin', fer it's the picter of an angel
she is," cried Mrs. O'Malligan, she of the first-floor front, who added
a tidy sum to her husband's earnings by taking in washing, and in
consequence of the size of these united incomes, no less than that of
her big heart, was regarded with much respect by the Tenement, "just
look at the swate face of her, would ye, an' the loikes of her illegant
gown!"

"Won't it tell its Norma where it came from? Who brought the dearie here
and left it in the naughty room? Tell its Norma," continued Miss
Bonkowski, on her knees upon the bare and dirty floor, and eyeing the
dainty embroidery and examining the quality of the fine white dress
while she coaxed.

"Yosie brought Angel--" the child began, then as if the full realization
of the strangeness of it all returned at mention of that familiar name,
the baby turned her back on Norma and pulling at Mary Carew's dress
imperatively, gazed up into that lady's thin, sharp face, "Angel wants
her mamma,--take Angel to her mamma," she commanded, even while her baby
chin was quivering and the big eyes winking to keep back the tears.

"Sure an' it shall go to its mammy," returned Mrs O'Malligan soothingly,
"an' whir was it ye left her, me Angel?"

"Yes, tell its Norma where it left its mamma," murmured Miss Bonkowski
coaxingly.

"Yosie bring Angel way a way," explained the baby obediently. "Yosie say
Angel be a good girl and her come yite back. Where Yosie,--Angel wants
Yosie to come now," and the plaintive little voice broke into a sob, as
the child looked from one to the other of the circle beseechingly.

The ladies exchanged pitying glances while the persevering Miss Norma
rattled an empty spool in a tin cup violently to distract the baby's
thoughts. "And how old is Angel?" she continued.

Again the tears were checked, while the grave, disapproving surprise
which Miss Bonkowski's ignorance seemed to call forth, once more
overspread the small face, "Didn't a know her are three?" she returned
reprovingly, reaching for the improvised and alluring plaything.

"Yes, yes," murmured Miss Bonkowski apologetically, "Angel is three
years old, of course, a great, big girl."

"A gwate, big girl," repeated the baby, nodding her pretty head
approvingly, "that what Yosie say," then with abrupt change of tone,
"where her breakfast, her wants her milk!"

"An' she shall have it, sure," cried Mrs. O'Malligan promptly, and
retired out the door with heavy haste, while Miss Bonkowski hospitably
turned to bring forth what the apartment could boast in the way of
breakfast.

Meanwhile the other ladies withdrew to the one window of the small room
to discuss the situation.

"That's it, I'm sure," one was saying, while she twisted up her back
hair afresh, "for my man, he says he saw a woman pass our door yesterday
afternoon, kinder late, an' go on up steps with a young 'un in her arms.
He never seen her come back, he says, but Mis' Tomlin here, she says,
she seen a woman dressed nice, come down afterwards seemin' in a hurry,
but she didn't have no child, didn't you say, Mis' Tomlin?"

Thus appealed to, timid little Mrs. Tomlin shifted her wan-faced,
fretting baby from one arm to the other and asserted the statement to be
quite true.

"An'ther case of desartion," pronounced Mrs. O'Malligan, having
returned meanwhile with a cup filled with a thin blue liquid known to
the Tenement as _milk_, "a plain case of desartion, an' whut's to be
done about it, I niver can say!"

"Done!" cried Miss Bonkowski, on her knees before Mary and the child,
crumbling some bread into the milk, "and what are the police for but
just such cases?"

The other ladies glanced apprehensively at Mrs. O'Malligan, that lady's
bitter hatred of these guardians of the public welfare being well known,
since that day when three small O'Malligans were taken in the act of
relieving a passing Italian gentleman of a part of his stock of bananas.
Mrs. O'Malligan had paid their fines in the City Court, had thrashed
them around as many times as her hot Irish temper had rekindled at the
memory, but had never forgiven the police for the disgrace to the family
of O'Malligan. And being the well-to-do personage of The Tenement, it
should be remarked that Mrs. O'Malligan's sentiments were generally
deferred to, if not always echoed by her neighbors.

"An' is it the polace ye'd be a-callin' in?" she burst forth volubly,
reproach and indignation written upon the round red face she turned upon
Miss Norma, "the polace? An' would ye be turnin' over the darlin' to the
loikes of thim, to be locked up along with thaves an' murtherers afore
night?" And, as a chorus of assenting murmurs greeted her, with her
broad, flat foot thrust forward and hands upon her ample hips, Mrs.
O'Malligan hurried on.

"The polace is it ye say? An' who but these same polace, I ask ye, was
it, gettin' this Tiniment,--as has always held it's head up
respectable,--a-gettin' this Tiniment in the noospapers last winter
along of that case of small-pox, an' puttin' a yellow flag out, an
afther that nobody a-willin' to give me their washin', an Miss C'rew
here as could get no pants to make, an' yerself, Miss Norma, darlint,
an' no disrespect to you a-spakin' out so bold, a-layin' idle because of
no thayater a-willin' to have ye. An' wasn't it thim same polace
crathurs, too, I'm askin' ye, as took our rainwather cistern away along
of the fevers breakin' out, they made bold to say, the desaivin'
crathers,--an' me a-niver havin' me washin' white a-since, for ye'll
aisy see why, usin' the muddy wather as comes from that hydranth
yirselves!"

Mrs. O'Malligan glanced around triumphantly, shook her head and hurried
on. "An' agin, there's little Joey. Who was it but the polace as come
arristin' the feyther of the boy for batin' of his own wife, and him
sint up for a year, an' she a-dyin' along of bein' weakly an' nobody to
support her, an' Joey left in this very Tiniment an orphan child! Don't
ye be a-callin' in no polace for the loikes of this swate angel choild,
Miss Norma darlint, don't ye be doin' it! An' the most of thim once
foine Irish gintlemen, bad luck to the loikes of thim!"

Mrs. O'Malligan paused,--she was obliged to,--for breath, whereupon Miss
Bonkowski very amiably hastened to declare she meant no harm, having
absolutely no knowledge of the class whatever, "except," with arch
humor, "as presented on the stage, where, as everybody who had seen them
there knew, they were harmless enough, goodness knows!" And the airy
chorus lady shrugged her shoulders and smiled at her own bit of
pleasantry. "But for the matter of that, I still think something ought
to be done, and what other means can we find for restoring the lost
innocent?" and Miss Norma tossed her frizzled blonde head, quite
enjoying, if the truth be told, the touch of romance about the affair.
For once she seemed to be meeting, in real life, a situation worthy of
the boards of The Garden Opera House, in whose stage vernacular a
missing child was always a "lost innocent." "If we do not call on the
police, Mrs. O'Malligan, how are we to ever find the child's mother?"

Here Mary Carew looked up, and there was something like a metallic click
about Mary's hard, dry tones as she spoke, for the years she had spent
in making jeans pantaloons at one dollar and a half a dozen had not been
calculated to sweeten her tones to mellowness, nor to induce her to
regard human nature with charity.

"Don't you understand?" she said bluntly, "all the huntin' in the world
ain't goin' to find a mother what don't mean to be found?"

"But what makes you so sure she don't?" persisted Miss Bonkowski,
letting the child take possession of spoon and cup, and quite revelling
in the further touch of the dramatic developing in the situation.

Unconsciously Mary pressed the child to her as she spoke. "It's as plain
as everything else that's wrong and hard in this world," she said, and
each word clicked itself off with metallic sharpness and decision, "the
mother brought the child here late yesterday, waited until it was asleep
in the room over there, then went off and left it. Why she chose this
here particular Tenement we don't know and likely never will, though I
ain't no doubt myself there's a reason. It ain't a pretty story or easy
to understand but it's common enough, and you'll find that mother never
means to be found, an' in as big a city as this 'n', tain't no use to
try."

"I will not--cannot--believe it," murmured Norma--in her best stage
tones. Then she turned again to the child. "And how did it come here,
dearie? Has baby a papa--where is baby's papa?"

The little one rattled the tin spoon around the sides of the cup. "Papa
bye," she returned chasing a solitary crumb intently. "Yosie sick,
mamma sick, Tante sick, but Angel, her ain't sick when she come way a
way on--on--" a worried look flitted over the flushed little face, and
she looked up at Norma expectantly as if expecting her to supply the
missing word, "on,--Angel come way a way on--_vaisseau_--" at last with
baby glee she brought the word forth triumphantly, "Papa bye and Angel
and mamma and Tante and Yosie come way a way on _vaisseau_!"

"You see," said Mary Carew, looking at Norma, and the others shook their
heads sadly.

Miss Bonkowski accepted the situation. "Though what a vasso is, or a
tante either, is beyond me to say," she murmured.

"But what is goin' to be done with her, then?" ventured little Mrs.
Tomlin, holding her own baby closer as she spoke.

There was a pause which nobody seemed to care to break, during which
more than one of the women saw the child on Mary's knee through dim eyes
which turned the golden hair into a halo of dazzling brightness. Then
Norma got up and began to clear away the remains of breakfast and to
clatter the crockery from stove and table together for washing, while
Mary Carew, avoiding the others' glances, busied herself by awkwardly
wiping the child's mouth and chin with a corner of her own faded cotton
dress.

Submitting as if the process was a matter of course, the baby gazed
meanwhile into Mary's colorless, bony and unlovely face. Perhaps the
childish eyes found something behind its hardness not visible to older
and less divining insight, for one soft hand forthwith stole up to the
hollow cheek, while the other pulled at the worn sleeve for attention.
"What a name?" the clear little voice lisped inquiringly.

Poor Mary looked embarrassed, but awkwardly lent herself to the caress
as if, in spite of her shamefacedness, she found it not unpleasant.

The baby's eyes regarded her with sad surprise. "A got no name,
poor--poor--a got no name," then she broke forth, and as if quite
overcome with the mournfulness of Mary's condition, the little head
burrowed back into the hollow of the supporting arm, that she might the
better gaze up and study the face of this object for pity and wonder.

Poor Mary Carew--would that some one of the hundreds of un-mothered and
unloved little ones in the great city had but found it out sooner--her
starved heart had been hungering all her life, and now her arms closed
about the child.

"I reckon I'll keep her till somebody comes for her," she said with a
kind of defiance, as if ashamed of her own weakness, "it'll only mean,"
with a grim touch of humor in her voice, "it'll only mean a few more
jean pantaloons a week to make any how."

"We'll share her keep between us alike, Mary Carew," declared Norma,
haughtily, with a real, not an affected toss, of the frizzed head now,
"what is your charge, is mine too, I'd have you know!"

"Sure, an' we'll all do a part for the name of the house," said Mrs.
O'Malligan, "an' be proud." And the other ladies agreeing to this more
or less warmly, the matter was considered as settled.

"An' as them as left her know where she is," said Mary Carew, the click
quite decided again in her tones, "if they want her, they know where to
come and get her--but--you hear to what I say, Norma, they'll never
come!"




CHAPTER II.

THE ENTERTAINERS OF THE ANGEL.


It was one thing for the good ladies of the Tenement to settle the
matter thus, but another entirely for the high-spirited, passionate
little stranger,--bearing every mark of refined birth and good breeding
in her finely-marked features, her straight, slim white body, her
slender hands and feet, her dainty ways and fearless bearing,--to adapt
herself to the situation. The first excitement over, her terror and
fright returned, and the cry went up unceasingly in lisping English
interspersed with words utterly unintelligible to the two distracted
ladies, begging to be taken to that mother of whom Mary Carew
entertained so poor an opinion.

It was in vain that good woman, with a tenderness and patience quite at
variance with her harsh tones, rocked, petted, coaxed and tried to
satisfy with vague promises of "to-morrow." In vain did Norma, no less
earnestly now that the touch of romance had faded into grim
responsibility, whistle and sing and snap her fingers, the terror was
too real, the sense of loss too poignant, the baby heart refused to be
comforted, and it was only when exhaustion came that the child would
moan herself to sleep in Mary's arms.

So passed several days, the baby drooping and pining, but clinging to
Mary through it all, with a persistency which, while it won her heart
entirely, sadly interfered with the progress of jean pantaloons.

As for the more material Norma, whose time, free from the requirements
of her profession, had hitherto been largely given to reshaping her old
garments in imitations of the ever-changing fashions, finding that the
baby clung to Mary, she bore no malice, but good-naturedly turned her
skill toward making the poor accommodations of their room meet the needs
of the occasion, and in addition appointed herself maid to her small
ladyship. And an arduous task it ultimately proved, for, as the child
gradually became reconciled and began to play about, a dozen times a day
a little pair of hands were stretched toward Norma and a sweet, tearful
voice proclaimed in accents of anguished grief, "Angel's hands so-o-o
dirty!"--which indeed they were each time, her surroundings being of
that nature which rubbed off at every touch.

Indeed so pronounced was the new inmate's dislike to dirt, that Mary,
sensitive to criticism, took to rising betimes these hot mornings and
making the stuffy room sweet with cleanliness. Not so easy a task as one
might imagine either, in an apartment which combined kitchen, laundry,
bedroom, dining-room and the other conveniences common to housekeeping
in a 12 × 15 space, as evidenced by the presence of a stove, a table
with a tub concealed beneath, a machine, a bed, a washstand, two chairs,
and a gayly decorated bureau, Norma's especial property, set forth with
bottles of perfumery, a satin pin-cushion and a bunch of artificial
flowers in a vase. And in putting the room thus to rights, when it is
considered that every drop of water used upon floor, table or window,
had to be carried up four flights of stairs, the sincerity of Mary's
conversion to the angelic way of regarding things cannot be doubted.

Nor, if Mary's word can be taken, were these efforts wasted upon her
little ladyship, who, awakened by the bustle on the very first occasion
of Mary's crusade against the general disorder, sat up in the crib
donated by Mrs. O'Malligan,--the last of the O'Malligans being now in
trousers,--and hung over the side with every mark of approving interest.
And happy with something to love and an object to work for, Mary
continued to scrub on with a heart strangely light. "And I couldn't
slight the corners if I wanted to," she told her neighbors, "with them
great solemn eyes a-watchin' an' a-follerin' me."

It was on a morning following one of these general upheavals and
straightenings that the three sat down to breakfast, the two ladies
feeling unwontedly virtuous and elegant by reason of their clean
surroundings. The Angel seeming brighter and more willing to leave
Mary's side, Norma put her into one of their two chairs, and herself
sat on the bed. But no sooner had the baby grabbed her cracked mug than
her smooth forehead began to pucker, and, setting it down again, she
regarded Norma earnestly. "Didn't a ought to _say_ something?" she
demanded, and her eyes grew dark with puzzled questioning.

"And what should you say, darling?" returned Norma, leaning over to
crumble some bread into the milk which a little judicious pinching in
other directions made possible for the child.

The baby studied her bread and milk intently. "Jesus"--she lisped, then
hesitated, and her worried eyes sought Norma's again,--"Jésus"--then
with a sudden joyful burst of inspiration, "Amen," she cried and seized
her mug triumphantly.

"It's a blessing she is asking," said Norma with tears in her eyes, "I
know, for I've seen it done on the stage, though what with the food
being pasteboard cakes and colored plaster fruit, I never took much
stock in it before," and she laughed somewhat unsteadily.

"Bread and butter, come to supper," sang the baby with sudden glee,
"that what Tante says.--Where Angel's Tante?" and with the recollection
her face changed, and the pretty pointed chin began to quiver. A moment
of indecision, and she slipped down from her chair. "Kiss Angel bye,"
she commanded, tugging at Mary's skirts, "her goin' to Tante," the
little face fierce with determination, every curl bobbing with the
emphatic nods of the little head, "kiss her bye, C'rew," and the wild
sobs began again.

So passed a week, but, for all the added care and responsibility, the
longer this wayward, imperious little creature, with the hundred moods
for every hour, was hers, the less was Mary Carew disposed to consider
the possibility of any one coming to claim her. Not so with the
blonde-tressed chorus lady, who combined more of worldly wisdom with her
no less kindly heart. Patiently she tried to win the child's further
confidence, to stimulate the baby memory, to unravel the lisped
statements. But it was in vain. Smiles indeed, she won at length,
through tears, and little sad returns to her playful sallies, but the
little one's words were too few, her ideas too confused, for Norma to
learn anything definite from her lispings.

But Norma was not satisfied. "My heart misgives me," she murmured in the
tragic accents she so loved to assume,--one evening as she pinned on her
cheap and showy lace hat and adjusted its wealth of flowers, preparatory
to starting to the Garden Opera House, "my heart misgives me. It seems
to me it is our duty, Mary, to do something about this,--to report
it--somehow,--somewhere"--she ended vaguely. "Hadn't I better speak to a
policeman after all?"

Mary Carew drew the child,--drowsing in her arms,--to her quickly. "No,"
she said, and her thin, bony face looked almost fierce, "no, for if you
did and they couldn't find her people, which you know as well as I do
they couldn't, do you s'pose they'd give her back to us? They'd put her
in a refuge or 'sylum, that's what they'd do, where, while maybe she'd
have more to eat, she'd be enough worse off, a-starvin' for a motherin'
word!"

Miss Bonkowski, abashed at Mary's fierce attack, made an attempt to
speak, but Mary, vehemently interrupting, hurried on: "I know whereas I
speak, Norma Bonkowski, I know, I know. I've gone through it all myself.
I ain't never told you," and the knobby face burned a dull red, "I was
county poor, where I come from in the state, an' sent to th' poor-house
at four years old, myself, and I know, Norma, the miseries whereas I
speak of. And the Lord helpin' me," with grim solemnity, "an' since He
sent you here huntin' a room, an' since He helped me get the machine,
hard to run as it is, somehow I'm believin' more He's the Lord of us
poor folks too,--an' Him a-helpin' me to turn out one more pair of pants
a day, I'll never be the means of puttin' no child in a refuge no-how
an' no time. An' there it is, how I feel about it!"

Miss Bonkowski turned from a partial view of herself such as the
abbreviated glass to her bureau afforded. "Well," she said amiably,
"coming as I did from across the ocean as a child," and she nodded her
head in the supposed direction of the Atlantic, "and, until late years,
always enjoying a good home, what with father getting steady work as a
scene-painter, as I've told you often, and me going on in the chorus
off and on, and having my own bit of money, I don't really know about
the asylums in this country. But I have heard say they are so fine,
people ain't against deserting their children just to get 'em in such
places knowin' they'll be educated better'n they can do themselves."

Mary's pale eyes blazed. "Do you mean, Norma Bonkowski," she demanded
angrily, "that you'd rather she should go?"

Miss Bonkowski shrugged her shoulders somewhat haughtily. "How you do
talk, Mary! You know I don't,--but neither do I believe she is any
deserted child, and it's worrying me constant, what we ought to do. Poor
as I am, and what with father dying and the manager cutting my salary as
I get older,--I'll admit it to you, Mary, though I wouldn't have him
know I'm having another birthday to-day--" with a laugh and a shrug,
"why, as I say, I am pretty poor, but every cent I've got is yours and
the child's, and you know it, Mary Carew," and the good-hearted
chorus-lady, with a reproachful backward glance at her room-mate,
flounced out the door, leaving the re-assured Mary to sew, by the light
of an ill-smelling lamp, until her return from the theatre near
midnight.




CHAPTER III.

INTRODUCES THE LITTLE MAJOR.


While the fine, embroidered dress in which the Angel had made her
appearance was all Mrs. O'Malligan had claimed it as to daintiness and
quality, after a few days' wear, its daintiness gave place to dirt, its
quality thinned to holes.

Upon this the Tenement was called into consultation. The Angel must be
clothed, but what, even from its cosmopolitan wardrobe, could the house
produce suitable for angelic wear? Many lands indeed were represented by
the inmates who now called its shelter home, but none from that country
where Angels are supposed to have their being.

"On my word," quoth Miss Bonkowski to the ladies gathered in the room at
her bidding, and Miss Norma gave an eloquent shrug and elevated her
blackened eyebrows as she spoke, "on my word I believe her little heart
would break if she had to stay in dirty, ragged clothes very long. Such
a darling for being washed and curled, such a precious for always
cleaning up! It makes me sure she must be different,"--Miss Norma was
airy but she was also humble, recognizing perhaps her own inherent
shrinking from too frequent an application of soap and water--"she's
something different, born and bred, from such as me!"

But at this the ladies murmured. Miss Bonkowski had been their pride,
their boast, nor did their allegiance falter now, even in the face of
the Angel's claims to superiority.

Miss Bonkowski was not ungrateful for this expression of loyalty, which
she acknowledged with a smile, as she tightened the buckle on the very
high-heeled and coquettish slipper she was rejuvenating, but she
protested, nevertheless, that all this did not alter the fact that the
Angel must be clothed.

"As fer th' dirt," said the energetic Mrs. O'Malligan, on whose ample
lap the Angel was at that moment sitting in smiling friendliness, "sure
an' I'll be afther washin' her handful uv clothes ivery wake, meself,
an' what with them dozens of dresses I'm doin' fer Mrs. Tony's childers
all th' time, it's surely a few she'd be a-givin' me, whin I tell her
about th' darlint, an' me a niver askin' fer nothin' at all, along of
all mine bein' boys. Sure an' I'll be a-beggin' her this very day, I
will, whin I carry me washin' home."

And Mrs. O'Malligan being as good as her word, and Mrs. Tony
successfully interviewed, the good Irish lady returned home in triumph
bearing a large bundle of cast-off garments, and at once summoned the
Tenement to her apartments.

The first arrived ladies were already giving vent to their appreciation
of the Tony generosity when Miss Carew and Miss Bonkowski arrived,
Mary's bony face, in deference to the angelic prejudices now ruling her,
red and smarting from an energetic application of the same soap as
ministered to her room's needs, but beaming with a grim pride as she
bore the radiant Angel, wild with delight at getting out of her narrow
quarters.

Yielding to the popular voice, though not without reluctance, Mary
placed her darling in Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and the process of
exhibiting and trying on the garments began at once.

For a time her small ladyship yielded graciously, until seeing her
pretty feet bared that the little stockings and half worn shoes might be
fitted, she suddenly cast her eyes about the circle of ladies, and won
by the pretty, dark beauty of young Mrs. Repetto, the Tenement's bride
of a month's standing, imperiously demanded that lady to take the pink
toes to market.

Overcome with having the public attention thus drawn upon her, pretty
Mrs. Repetto in the best Italian-English she could muster, confessed her
inability to either understand or comply, whereupon the baby, bearing no
malice in her present high good-humor, proceeded to take them herself.

"This little pig went to market," the angelic accents declared, while
her ladyship smiled sweetly upon Mrs. Repetto, and Mary Carew
breathlessly motioned for silence with all the pride of a doting
parent.

"This little pig stayed home--" the ladies on the outskirts pressed near
that they too might hear.

"This little pig had bread and cheese," whereupon Mrs. Repetto
recovering, went down on her knees to be nearer the scene of exploit.

"This little pig had none;" the interest now was breathless, and as the
last little pig went squeaking home the ladies nearest fell upon the
darling and covered her with kisses.

"An' it's jus' that smart she is, all the time," declared Mary Carew
proudly, "an' 'taint like she's showin' off, either, is it, Norma?"

When at last the trying on was over, and the Tony generosity was
sufficiently enlarged upon, the ladies, as is the way with the best of
the sex, fell into a mild gossip before separating. And while racy bits
of Tenement shortcomings were being handed around, the small object of
this gathering, too young, alas, to know the joys denied her because of
her limited abilities to understand the nature of the conversation,
slipped down from Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and eluding Mary's absent
hold, proceeded to journey about the room, until reaching the open
door, she took her way, unobserved, out of the O'Malligan first floor
front and leaving its glories of red plush furniture and lace curtains
behind her, forthwith made her way out the hall door into the street.

The hot, garbage-strewn pavements and sunbaked gutters swarmed with the
sons and daughters of the Tenement. Directly opposite its five-storied
front was the rear entrance to the Fourth Regiment Armory. And there, at
that moment, a sad-eyed, swarthy Italian,--swinging his hand-organ down
on the asphalt pavement in front of the Armory's open doors, was
beginning to grind out his melodies. And with the first note, children
came running, from doorstep and curb, from sidewalk and gutter, while,
at the same moment, in the open door of the Armory appeared a small,
chubby-cheeked boy, who had upon his head a soldier cap so much too
large for him as to cover the tips of his ears entirely, and who,
moreover, wore, buckled about his waist, a belt gay as to trimmings and
glittering with silver finishings. If the Fourth Regiment boasted a
Company of Lilliputian Guards here surely was a member.

The Angel, in the Tenement door, was enchanted. How different a world
from that upstairs room under the roof! She kept step to the music and
nodded her head to the fascinating little boy in the Armory door. And
the sharp eyes of that young gentleman had no sooner espied the nodding
little creature in the doorway opposite, than heels together, head
erect, up went a quick hand to the military cap. The Angel was being
saluted, and while her ignorance of the fact prevented her appreciating
that honor, the friendliness of the little boy was alluring. Down the
steps she came, her little feet tripping to the measure of the music,
her skirts outheld, and flitting across the pavement and over the curb,
she made for the group of children in the street. Cobblestones, however,
being strange to the baby feet, up those dancing members tripped and
down the Angel fell, just as a wagon came dashing around the corner of
the streets.

Out rushed the small boy from the Armory door, and, scattering the crowd
around the organ, caught the fallen Angel by the arm, and raised his
hand with an air of authority, as, with a grin, the driver on the wagon
drew up his horse and surveyed the group, and the sad-eyed Italian,
recognizing the superior attraction, shouldered his organ and moved on.

"Hello," cried the man on the wagon seeing the child was not hurt, "yer
can soak me one if it ain't little Joe! Where'd yer git dem togs, kid?
What'r' yer goin' in fer anyhow, baby perlice?"

The region in the neighborhood of Joey's waist swelled with pride, and
his chubby face bore a look of wounded dignity. "There ain't no perlice
about this yere, Bill, it's a sojer I be, see?"

Being pressed by Bill to explain himself, Joey unbent. "Yer see, Bill,
Dad ain't never showed up fer to git me--seen anything of Dad since he
got out, Bill?"

Bill nodded.

"What's he up to now?" queried Joey.

"Shovin' the queer," admitted Bill laconically, "nabbed right off an' in
the cooler waitin' his turn, yer won't be troubled by him fer quite a
spell, I'll give yer dat fer a pointer, see?"

Joey saw, and for the space of half a second seemed somewhat sobered by
the intelligence. "I guessed as much," said he, "yer see, after he got
nabbed first, mammy she--yer didn't know as mammy took an' died, did
yer, Bill?" and Joey faltered and let the Angel take possession of his
cap and transfer it to her own curly head while the Tenement children
applauded with jeering commendation, seeing there was a standing feud
between Joey and the rest of the juvenile populace over its possession.

"No," Bill allowed, he did not know it, but, seeing that she was always
ailing, Bill was in no wise surprised.

"An'--an' since then, I'm stayin' over ter th' Arm'ry wid Old G. A. R.
Yer know him, Bill, Old G. A. R. what takes care of th' Arm'ry. He was
there afore yer left th' grocery."

Bill remembered the gentleman.

"I stays wid him an' he drills me an' makes me scrub, hully gee, how he
do make me wash meself, Bill! An' there's one sojer-man, th' Cap'n, he
give me these togs, he did, an' he tol' Old G. A. R. to lem'me eat along
wid him over ter Dutchy's Res'traunt," nodding toward a cheap
eating-house at the corner, "an' he'd stand fer it. They calls me major,
all of 'em to th' Arm'ry, Bill, see?" and Joey was waxing voluble
indeed, when he turned to see the mob of jeering children make off up
the street, his cap in their midst, while the wailing Angel was being
rescued from under the horse's very hoofs by Mary Carew.

Joey put his spirit of inquiry before even his cap. "Is she er Angel,
say?" he inquired of Miss Carew, turning his back on Bill without
ceremony who with a grin and a nod to the group of Tenement ladies at
the door, drove off, "I heerd yer had er Angel over there, but I didn't
know as it was straight, what they was givin' me, see?"

"That's what she is, the darling yonder," declared Miss Bonkowski from
the curbstone, nodding airily, "you've got it straight this time, Joey.
And if what Peter O'Malligan says about your picking her up just now is
so, you're welcome to come over some time and play with her."

"Yes, it's true," supplemented Mary Carew, trying to pacify the
struggling Angel in her arms who, gazing after the children, showed a
decided inclination to descend to human level and mingle with them of
earth, "it's true an' that's jus' what she is,--the Angel of this
Tenement, an', as Norma says, you're free to come over and play with
her, though there ain't many of you I'd say it to;" and with that the
tall, gaunt Mary bearing the baby, followed Norma into the house and up
the narrow, broken stairs, and along the dark halls past door after door
closed upon its story of squalor and poverty, until, at last, panting
with the child's weight, she reached their own abode under the roof.

"Which," as Mary had been wont, in the past, to observe, "was about as
near Heaven as the poor need look to get." But now, for some reason,
these bitter speeches were growing less frequent on Mary Carew's lips
since she opened her door to entertain an Angel.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ANGEL BECOMES A FAIRY.


July passed, and in August, the heat in the room beneath the roof set
the air to shimmering like a veil before the open window, and Mary
Carew, gasping, found it harder and harder to make that extra pair of
jean pantaloons a day. And, as though the manager at the Garden Opera
House had divined that Miss Bonkowski had left another birthday behind
her, like milestones along the way, that lady's salary received a cut on
the first day of August.

At best, the united incomes of the two made but a meagre sum, and there
was nothing for it now but to reduce expenses. The rent being one thing
that was never cut, the result was a scantier allowance of food.
Moreover, the mortals seeing to it that their heavenly visitant had her
full craving satisfied, it was small wonder that the bones in Mary's
face pressed more like knobs than ever against the tight-drawn skin, or
that the spirits of the airy, hopeful, buoyant Norma flagged. Indeed,
had not the warm-hearted, loving little creature, repaid them with quick
devotion, filling their meagre lives with new interests and affections,
despair or worse--regret for their generous impulse--must now have
seized their hearts.

Invitations, too, grew rare, from the other ladies of the Tenement,
bidding the little stranger whose simple friendliness and baby dignity
had won them all, to dine or to sup, for hard times had fallen upon them
also. A strike at a neighboring foundry, the shutting down of the great
rolling-mill by the river had sent their husbands home for a summer
vacation, with, unfortunately, no provision for wages, a state of
affairs forbidding even angels' visits, when the angel possessed so
human a craving for bread.

Even Mrs. O'Malligan, whose chief patron, Mrs. Tony, together with her
children and their dozens of dresses, had gone for a summer outing, had
no more on her table than her own family could dispose of.

But the Angel,--"'Eaving bless her," as Mrs. Tomlin was wont to observe
when the Angel, coming to see the baby, would stand with grave wonder,
touching the pallid little cheek with a rosy finger to make the baby
smile,--the Angel noted nothing of all this. Even the memory of
"_Mamma_" was fading, and Mary, Norma, the Tenement, the friendly
children swarming staircase and doorway, were fast becoming her small
world.

With instinct born of her profession, the chorus-lady had long ago
recognized the wonderful grace and buoyancy of the child's every
movement, and to her surprise found that the baby had quite a knowledge
of dancing.

"Who taught you how, my precious?" she would ask, when the child, as if
from the very love of motion, would catch and spread her skirts, and,
with pointed toe, trip about the room, "tell your Norma who taught the
darling how to dance?"

The baby glancing over her shoulder, with the little frown of
displeasure that always greeted such ignorance on Norma's part, had but
one reply: "Tante," she would declare, and continue her measured walk
about the floor. So, for pastime, Norma began teaching her the figures
of a dance then on the boards at the Opera House, to which her little
ladyship lent herself with readiness. The motions, sometimes approaching
the grotesque in the lean and elderly chorus-lady as she bobbed about
the limited space, courtesying, twirling, pirouetting, her blonde hair
done up in kids,--herself in the abbreviated toilet of pink calico sack
and petticoat reserved for home hours, changed to unconscious grace and
innocent abandon in the light, clean-limbed child, who learned with
quickness akin to instinct, and who seemed to follow Norma's movements
almost before they were completed.

"It is wonderful--amazing!" Miss Bonkowski would exclaim, pausing for
breath, "it is _genius_," and her voice would pause and fall reverently
before the words, and the lesson would be resumed with greater
enthusiasm than before.

But many were the days when, Norma away at rehearsal and Mary Carew,
hot, tired, alas, even cross,--totally irresponsive to anything but the
stitching of jean pantaloons,--the Angel would grow tired of the stuffy
room and long for the forbidden dangers and delights of Tenement
sidewalks. Then, often, with nothing else to do, she would catch up her
tiny skirts and whirl herself into the dance Norma had taught her, in
and out among the furniture crowding the room, humming little broken
snatches of music for herself, bending, swaying, her bright eyes full of
laughter as they met Mary's tired ones, her curls bobbing, until
breathless, hot and weary she would drop on the floor and fall asleep,
her head pillowed on her soft dimpled arm.

But on one of these long, hot mornings when the heat seemed to stream in
as from a furnace at the window and even the flies buzzed languidly, the
Angel was seized with another idea for passing time. Her vocabulary of
Tenement vernacular was growing too, and she chattered unceasingly.

"C'rew, didn't a fink Angel might go find her mamma?" she demanded on
this particular morning.

"To-morrow," said C'rew, and the click in her tired voice sounded even
above the whirring of the heavy machine, for C'rew's head ached and her
back ached, and possibly her heart ached too, for herself and Norma and
the child and poor people in one-windowed tenement rooms in general.

"Didn't a fink she might go play with little Joey?"

"No," said Mary decidedly, and she leaned back wearily and pushed her
thin, colorless hair off her hot, throbbing temples, "no, you played
down on the pavement with Joey an' th' rest yesterday, an the sun made
you sick. But," with haste to avert the cloud lowering over the baby
face, "if you'll be real good an' not worry her, you can go down an' see
Mrs. O'Malligan."

Fair weather prevailed again on the pretty face, and at Mary's word the
Angel was at the open door, tugging at the chair placed crossways to
keep her from venturing out unobserved, and with a sigh and a guilty
look at the pile of unfinished work, Mary rose and carried her down to
the good Irish lady's door, and, with a word, hurried back.

Mrs. O'Malligan, big, beaming and red, smiled a moist but hearty welcome
from over her tubs toward the little figure in the faded gingham
standing shyly in the open doorway. "An' it's proud to see ye I am, me
Angel," she declared, "though there's never a childer in call to be
playin' wid ye."

But the Angel, nothing daunted, smiled back in turn, and climbed into a
chair, and the two forthwith fell into friendly conversation, though it
is doubtful if either understood one-half of what the other was talking
about.

Presently Mrs. O'Malligan, with many apologies, went out into the back
court to hang out the last of the family wash, and on her return,
stopping short in the doorway, her jolly red face spread into a
responsive smile. "The saints presarve us," she cried, "would ye look at
the child?" for in the tub of blue rinsing water sat the gleeful Angel,
water trickling from her yellow hair and from every stitch of clothing,
while her evident enjoyment of the cool situation found a response in
Mrs. O'Malligan's kind and indulgent heart.

"Angel take a baf," was the smiling though superfluous explanation
which came from the infant Undine.

"An' it's right ye are," laughed Mrs. O'Malligan, "an' sure I'll be
afther givin' ye a rale wan meself," and filling an empty tub with clean
water, the brisk lady soon had the baby stripped to her firm, white skin
and standing in the tub.

And what with the splashings of the naughty feet, and the wicked tumbles
into the soap-suds every time the mischievous little body was rinsed,
and Mrs. O'Malligan's "Whist, be aisy," and "It's a tormentin' darlint
ye are," they heard nothing of the knocks at the door or the calls, nor
knew that Miss Bonkowski, in street dress and hat, had entered, until
she stood beside them with an armful of clean clothes.

"Was there ever such luck," she cried excitedly, "to find her all washed
and just ready! Mary said she was here, and so I just brought her clean
clothes down with me to save a trip back upstairs. Wipe her quickly,
please," and with hands and tongue going, Miss Norma explained that one
of the children in the juvenile dance on the boards at The Garden Opera
House had been suddenly taken ill, and a matinée advertised for the next
day.

"And it happens lucky enough," she went on, addressing the ladies who,
catching wind of the excitement, had speedily gathered about the
doorway, "it just happens I have been teaching her this very dance, and
if she don't get frightened, I believe she will be able to take the
place."

So saying, Miss Bonkowski gave a pull out and a last finishing pat to
the strings of the embroidered muslin bonnet the child had worn on her
first appearance, and taking her, clean, dainty, smiling and expectant,
into her arms, Miss Norma plunged out of the comparative coolness of the
Tenement hallway into the glare of the August sun.

But all this while the little brain was at work. "Goin' to Angel's
mamma,--her goin' to her mamma," suddenly the child broke forth as Norma
hurried along the hot streets, and the little hand beat a gleeful tattoo
as it rested on Norma's shoulder.

Norma paused on the crowded sidewalk, to take breath beneath the shade
of a friendly awning. "Not to-day, my angel," she panted, "to-day your
Norma is going to take her precious where there are ever so many nice
little girls for her to dance with."

"Angel likes to dance with little girls, Norma," admitted the baby,
while Norma made ready to thread her way across the street through the
press of vehicles.

"I'll not say one word to her about being frightened," reflected the
wise chorus lady, "and she's such an eager little darling, thinking of
other things and trying to do her best, maybe she won't think of it. If
she can only keep the place while that child is sick,--what a help the
money would be!"--and the usually hopeful Norma sighed as she hurried in
the side entrance of the handsome stone building known to the public as
The Garden Opera House.

          *          *          *          *          *

The next afternoon, at The Garden Opera House, as the bell rang for the
curtain to rise, Mary Carew, in best attire of worn black dress and
cheap straw hat, was putting the Angel into the absent fairy's cast-off
shell, which consisted of much white tarlatan as to skirts and much
silver tinsel as to waist, with a pair of wonderful gauzy wings at sight
of which the Angel was enraptured.

Miss Bonkowski being, as she expressed it, "on in the first scene," Mary
Carew had been obliged to forsake jean pantaloons for the time being and
come to take charge of the child, who in her earnest, quick,
enthusiastic little fashion had done her part and gone through the
rehearsal better even than the sanguine Norma had hoped, and after
considerable drilling had satisfied the authorities that she could fill
the vacancy.

As for the Angel, in her friendly fashion she had enjoyed herself
hugely, accepting the homage of the other children like a small queen,
graciously permitting herself to be enthused over by the various ladies
who, like Norma, constituted "the chorus," and carrying home numerous
offerings, from an indigestible wad of candy known as "an
all-day-sucker," given her by her fairy-partner, to a silver quarter
given her by the blonde and handsome tenor.

"She is the most fascinating little creature I ever met in my life,"
the prima donna had cried to the excited Miss Bonkowski, who had never
been addressed by that great personage before,--"did you ever see such
heavenly eyes,--not blue--violet--and such a smile--like the sun through
tears! Who is she,--where did she come from? Such grace,--such poise!"

The Angel's story was recited to quite an audience, in Miss Bonkowski's
most dramatic manner. But long before the chorus lady had finished, the
great singer, lending but a wandering attention after the few facts were
gathered, had coaxed the child into her silken lap, and with the mother
touch which lies in every real woman's fingers from doll-baby days
upward, was fondling and re-touching the rings of shining hair, and,
with the mother-notes which a child within one's arms brings into every
womanly woman's voice, was cooing broken endearments into the little
ear.

Meanwhile the Angel gazed into the beautiful face with the calm and
critical eyes of childhood. But what she saw there must have satisfied,
for, with a sigh of content, she finally settled back against the
encircling arm. "Pretty lady," was her candid comment. "Angel loves
her."

Flattered and praised as she had been, it is doubtful if the great
singer had ever received a tribute to her charms that pleased her more.
"Bring her to my room to-morrow to dress her," she said to Miss
Bonkowski in soft, winning tones that were nevertheless a command,
unpinning the two long-stemmed roses she wore and putting them in the
baby fingers, "and bring her early, mind!" And so it was that Mary
Carew, nervous and awkward, was there now, doing her best to dress the
excited little creature, whom nothing could keep still a second at a
time.

"Thank you, ma'am," Mary managed to breathe as the great personage,
turning the full radiance of her beauty upon the bewildered seamstress,
took the necklace of flashing jewels from her maid's fingers and bade
her help Mary.

The great lady laughed. "You're nervous, aren't you?" she said
good-humoredly, too human not to be pleased at this unconscious tribute
on Mary's part.

"If the child can only do it right, ma'am," said Mary, in a voice she
hardly knew for her own, overcome this by graciousness no less than by
the splendor.

"Right," said the lady, clasping a bracelet upon her round, white arm,
and settling her trailing draperies preparatory to going on, "right! Of
course she will, who ever heard of an Angel going wrong!" and laughing
she sailed away.

"Now," cried Miss Bonkowski, rushing in a little later, "give her to me,
quick, Mary! If you stand right here in the wings you can see nicely,"
and the excited lady, wonderful as to her blonde befrizzlement, gorgeous
as to pink skirt, blue bodice and not the most cleanly of white waists,
bore the Angel, like a rosebud in a mist of gauze, away.

Left alone amid the bustle and confusion Mary stood where Norma had
directed, gazing out upon the stage like one in a dream. Never in all
her colorless life had she been in the midst of such bewildering
splendors before. Was it any wonder that Norma Bonkowski was different
from the rest of the Tenement when she shared such scenes daily?

Still further dazed by the music and the glimpses she could catch of the
brilliantly lighted house, Mary held her breath and clasped her hands as
she gazed out on the stage where, across the soft green, from among the
forest trees, into the twilighted opening, glided the fairies; waving
their little arms, tripping slowly as if half-poised for flight,
listening, bending, swaying, whirling, faster, swifter, they broke into
"The Grand Spectacular Ballet of the Fairies," as the advertisements of
the opera phrased it. Faster, swifter still, noiselessly they spun,
here, there, in, out, in bewildering maze until, as the red and yellow
lights cast upon the stage changed into green, their footsteps
slackened, faltered, their heads, like tired flowers, drooped, and each
on its mossy bank of green,--the fairies sank to sleep.

All? All but one; one was left, in whose baby mind was fixed an
unfaltering supposition that she must dance, as she had done alone, over
and over again at the rehearsals for her tiny benefit, until the music
stopped. So, while Norma Bonkowski wrung her hands and the stage
manager swore, and all behind the scenes was confusion and dismay, the
Angel danced on.

The prima donna whose place it now was, as the forsaken princess, lost
in the forest, to happen upon the band of sleeping fairies, waited at
her entrance, watching the child as, catching and spreading her fan-like
skirts of gauze, she bent, swayed, flitted to and fro, her eyes big and
earnest with intentness to duty, her yellow hair flying, all
unconscious, in the fierce glare of the colored lights, of the sea of
faces in the house before her.

With a sudden flash of intuition Norma Bonkowski flew to the manager.
"Stop the music, make them stop," she begged.

He glared at her savagely, but nevertheless communicated the order to
the orchestra, and as the music waned to a mere wailing of the violin,
the little dancer, rosy, hot, tired, whirled slower, slower,--then sank
on her bed of green, and like her companions feigned sleep with the
cunning pretence of childhood.

But not even then could the prima donna make her appearance, for, in the
storm of applause which followed, the revived efforts of the orchestra
were drowned.

The face of the manager broadened into smiles, Norma Bonkowski fell
against Mary Carew with tears of relief, and the prima donna with
good-natured readiness stepped upon the stage, lifted the now frightened
child who, at the noise, had sprung up in alarm, and carried her out to
the footlights, the other children peeping, but too well drilled, poor
dears, to otherwise stir. The audience paused.

"Wave bye-bye to the little girl over there," whispered the prima donna
with womanly readiness, nodding toward the nearest box, filled with
children eagerly enjoying "The Children's Opera of the Princess Blondina
and the Fairies."

Though frightened and ready to cry, the Angel waved her hand obediently,
and the prima donna, nodding and smiling in the unaffected fashion which
was half her own charm, carried the child off the stage amid applause as
enthusiastic as she herself was used to receiving.

It had all taken place in a very few minutes, but as the smiling singer
said, handing the Angel over to the manager, even in those few moments,
"She has made the hit of the season," then, turning, re-entered the
stage, her voice, with its clear bell-like tones, filling the house with
the song, "Blondina Awakening The Fairies."

Nor did it end with this, for the Angel was forthwith engaged, at what
seemed to Norma and Mary a fabulous price, to repeat her solo dance at
every Wednesday and Saturday matinée during the further run of the
opera.




CHAPTER V.

THE ANGEL RESCUES MR. TOMLIN.


It was on the afternoon that Mary carried back her week's completed work
that Norma, receiving an unexpected summons to the Opera House, was
obliged, though with many misgivings, to leave the Angel in the charge
of Joey. "But what else could I do," she reasoned afterward, "with Mrs.
O'Malligan out and Mrs. Tomlin sick, and nobody else willing, it
appeared, to see to her?"

True, she had cautioned Joey, over and over again about keeping the
child away from the window, and about staying right in the room until
her return; but, notwithstanding, Norma could hardly have gotten to the
corner before Joey, promptly forgetting his promise, and finding the
room a dull playground, was enticing his charge into the hall and
straightway down the stairs.

At the bottom of the second flight, the two children came upon Mr.
Tomlin entertaining two gentlemen callers. Only the week before, the
Tenement had been called upon to mourn with the Tomlins, whose baby had
been carried away in a little coffin after the fashion of tenement
babies when the thermometer climbs up the scale near to one hundred. And
since then, Mrs. Tomlin, refusing to be comforted, had taken to her bed,
thus making it necessary for her husband to receive his company in the
hall.

The callers, who, together with their host, were sitting on the steps,
moved aside to allow the children to pass. The larger of the gentlemen
was unpleasantly dirty, with a ragged beard and a shock of red hair. The
other was a little man with quick black eyes and a pleasant smile.
Passing these by, the Angel paused on the step above Mr. Tomlin and
slipped her arms around his neck.

"Pick a back, my Tomlin," she sweetly commanded in the especially
imperious tones she reserved for Mr. Tomlin's sex, "get up, horsey."

The good-natured giant, for such her Tomlin was, shouldered her as one
would some precious burden liable to break, grinned, stood up and
obediently trotted the length of the hall and back.

Joey, meanwhile, legs apart, stood eyeing the visitors attentively.
"Keep up that kind of talk," the dirty gentleman was urging, "and we've
got him. He's worth any three of ordinary strength, and he's a favorite
with the men, too."

Here the horse and his rider returned. "What a got in a pocket for
Angel?" the young autocrat proceeded to demand when lifted down. Of all
her masculine subjects in the Tenement, Mr. Tomlin was her veriest
slave.

He produced a soiled but gay advertising picture. Her ladyship put out
her hand. "But you must give us a dance fer it," coaxed Mr. Tomlin,
anxious to display the talent of the Tenement. "She's the young 'un as
dances at the Op'ry House, the kid is," he explained to his visitors,
"they've had her pictoor in the papers, too. Miss Bonkowski, the
chorus-lady upstairs, she's got one of them, came out in a Sunday
supplement, though I can't say I see the likeness myself."

At this, the two gentlemen, who had seemed decidedly bored than
otherwise at the interruption, deigned to bestow a moment of their
attention upon the beautiful child in the faded gingham dress.

"She got skeered to the theyater the other day," put in Joey, "an' most
cried when they clapped so, an' they promised her anything she wanted if
she wouldn't next time----"

"And her didn't cwy," declared the baby, turning a pair of indignantly
reproachful eyes upon Joey, "her danced, her didn't cwy."

"Ain't yer goin' to dance fer us now?" coaxed Mr. Tomlin.

"No," said the Angel naughtily, then relenting at sight of her Tomlin's
face, "her'll sing, her won't dance."

The pleasant gentleman, thinking, perhaps to please Mr. Tomlin, or maybe
to get rid of them the sooner, produced a red ribbon badge. "Ef ze will
sing," he said, showing his white teeth as he smiled, "ze shall hav it."

Turning to view this new party, her ladyship treated him to a brief
examination, but evidently approving of him, began to sing with no more
ado:

    "Je suis si l'enfant gaté
      Tra la la la, tra la la,
    Car je les aime les petits patés.
      Et les confitures,
    Si vous voulez me les donner
    Je suis très bien obligé,
      Tra la la la, tra la la,
      Tra la la la, tra la la."

Only a word here and there could have been intelligible, but their
effect upon the pleasant gentleman was instantaneous. He broke into a
torrent of foreign exclamations and verbosity, showing his teeth and
gesticulating with his hands.

A strange light came into the baby's face and she held out her arms to
the little man entreatingly. "Oui, oui," she cried, a spot of red
burning on each cheek, "you take Angel to her mamma, take Angel to her
mamma!"

But here the door of the Tomlin's room opened hastily, and the neighbor
who was sitting with the sick woman thrust out her head. "She's talkin'
mighty wild an' out her head," she said, "you'd better come to her."

Mr. Tomlin rose hastily, while the dark little man, yielding to the
child's entreaties, took her in his arms.

But the red-headed gentleman laid a dirty hand on Mr. Tomlin's arm.
"Just as I was saying," he said, as if resuming a broken-off
conversation, "no doctor, no medicine. Why? No work, no wages. Why? The
heel of the rich man grinding the poor to the earth."

Mr. Tomlin hesitated.

"It's entirely a meeting of Union men. No violence advocated. A
mass-meeting to discuss appointing committees to demand work."

"Ze outcry of ze oppressed," put in the pleasant gentleman, looking out
from behind the Angel's fair little head, and showing his white teeth in
his smile, "in zer union ees zere only strength."

Mr. Tomlin's door opened still more violently. "She's a-beggin' as
you'll get her some ice," announced the neighbor, "she says she's
burnin' up."

"God A'mighty!" burst forth the giant, "I ain't got a cent on earth to
get her nothin'," and he turned toward the two men fiercely, his great
brows meeting over his sullen eyes, "yes, I'll come, you can count on
me," and he went in the door.

"Liberty Square by the statue, four o'clock," called the dirty gentleman
after him, while the pleasant gentleman put the Angel hastily down.
"Adieu, mon enfant," he cried, showing his teeth as he smiled back over
his shoulder, and followed his companion down the stairs.

In time Joey and his weeping charge also reached the bottom. Not a word
of the conversation had escaped the sharp ears of the Major. "It's past
two, now," he soliloquized, "an' he said Liberty Square, four o'clock. I
know where the statoo is. Yer follows the cars from front of th' arm'ry
an' they goes right there, 'cause that's where the Cap'n's office is.
Don'tcher cry no more, Angel," with insinuating coaxing in his tones,
"I'll take yer there if yer wanter go."

The Angel slipped her hand in his obediently, and the two forthwith
proceeded to leave the neighborhood of the Tenement behind them,
undeterred by the friendly overtures of Petey O'Malligan and his
colleagues to join in with their pastimes.

"We ain't got no time fer foolin'," confided Joey, hurrying her along,
"there'll be flags an' hollerin', an' we wanter get there in time."

On reaching the car line the small Major was obliged to slacken his
speed, for, while, in a measure, the Angel had caught the spirit of his
enthusiasm, yet her legs refused to keep pace with his haste.

"Ef yer was still ter heaven, Angel," the Major pondered, as they stood
on the street corner getting breath, "yerz wouldn't need ter use yer
legs at all, would yer? Yer'd jus' take out an' fly across this yere
street, waggins an' trucks an' all, wouldn't yer?"

The Angel cast her eyes upon him doubtfully.

"That's what my mammy tol' me about Angels," Joey declared stoutly.

"Angel didn't a never fly," nevertheless the baby stated with
conviction.

Joey looked disappointed, and even unconvinced. Then his face
brightened. "That's 'cause you was too little, like that canary at th'
Res't'rant what ain't got its feathers yet. You was too little fer yer
wings to have growed afore you come away," and his lively imagination
having thus settled the problem, the two continued their way.

"Yer see how it is," he observed presently, evidently having been
revolving the subject in his busy brain, "ef Mis' Tomlin had th' doctor
an' some ice, she'd get well, she would, an' Mr. Tomlin, he's goin' to
this yere meetin' to see about work, so's he can get 'em fer her. But
'tain't no use fer workin' men to beg for work these yere days," he
added with a comical air of wisdom. "I heerd Old G. A. R. say, I did, to
a man what comes ter talk politics wid him, that beggin' th' rich people
to help yer was jus' like buttin' yer head agin a brick wall, so what
good's it goin' ter do if he does go?"

The Angel nodded amiably, and slipped her hand in Joey's that she might
the better keep up. They had passed the region of small shops and were
passing through a better portion of the city. Before a tall stone house,
one of a long row, a girl stood singing, while a boy played an
accompaniment on a harp. As Joey and his charge reached them, a lady,
with a group of children clustered about her, threw some pennies out
the window to the young musicians.

"Did yer see that, Angel," demanded Joey, "did yer ketch onter that
little game? We c'n do that. I c'n whis'le an' you c'n sing, an' we'll
make 'nough to get Mis' Tomlin th' ice ourselves. If yer do," continued
the wily Joey, "I tell yer what,--we'll go home on the cable cars, we
will." And he hurried his small companion along the sunny sidewalks,
still following the line of the cable cars, until they came to a
business street again, this time of large and handsome stores. Here,
before the most imposing, Joey paused, and cast a calculating eye upon
the stream of shoppers passing in and out. "Now, Angel, sing," he
commanded.

The footsore, tired Angel, hot and cross, declined to do it. "Her wants
to sit down an' west," she declared.

"We'll sit down out there on ther curbstone an' rest soon as yer sing
some," promised the Major. So, taking up their stand on the flagging
outside the entrance of the big store, the bare-headed Angel, in her
worn gingham frock, highbred and beautiful as a little princess,
despite it, struck up with as much effect as a bird's twitter might
make. Finding that his whistle in no way corresponded to the song, Joey
wisely contented himself with holding out his soldier's cap.

Two such babies, one with so innocent, and the other with so comically
knowing a smile, could not but attract attention. Some laughed, some
sighed, some stopped to question, many dropped pennies and some put
nickels, and even a dime or two into Joey's cap, while one stout and
good-humored woman opened the paper bag she carried and put a sponge
cake in each hand. But at this point, seeing that the policeman in
charge of the crossing had more than once cast a questioning eye upon
them, Joey decided to move on. "We'll have ter hurry anyhow," he
observed, "ter get to ther speakin' in time. If you'll come on, Angel,
'thout restin', I'll tell yer what,--I'll buy yer a banana, I will,
first ones we see." And the weary Angel, thus beguiled, dragged her
tired feet along in Joey's wake.

          *          *          *          *          *

The slanting rays from the setting sun were falling across Liberty
Square, on the statue of that great American who declared all men to be
created equal, on the sullen faces of hundreds of idle men who stood
beneath its shadow, listening to speech after speech from various
speakers, speeches of a nature best calculated to coax the smouldering
resentment in their hearts into a blaze.

On the outskirts of the park-like square a small boy was urging a
smaller girl to hurry. "Angel's legs won't go no more," the diminutive
female was wailing as her companion dragged her along.

Meanwhile the impassioned words of the last oration were being echoed
and emphasized by mutterings and imprecations. The mob, in fact, was
beginning to respond, just as its promoters had intended that it should,
and as their dangerous eloquence continued to pour forth, the emotions
of the crowd accordingly grew fiercer, louder, until from sullen
mutterings, the applauding echoes grew to clamor and uproar. And
following the impassioned harangue of the last speaker upon the
program--a red-haired gentleman, unpleasantly dirty--the cheers gave
place to groans, the groans grew to threats, to curses, and the
confusion spread like the roar of a coming storm.

Suddenly above the noise, came the measured tramp of feet. In the
momentary lull succeeding, "The police, the police," a voice rang out on
the silence, and the single cry swelled to a roar from hundreds of
throats, and as suddenly died away to an expectant silence. At that a
voice, loud with authority, rang out upon the stillness, "In the name of
the Commonwealth," the measured words declared, "I command you to
immediately and peaceably disperse!"

The answer came in a chorus of jeers, hoots, yells of derision, and the
howling mob began to seize whatever promised to be a weapon of defense
or attack. Growing in numbers as dusk fell, the crowd now was spreading
back into the surrounding streets. Merchants who had not already done
so, were hurriedly closing their stores. The cars were blocked, and foot
travellers fleeing in all directions. From the thickest of the crowd, a
mighty creature of bone and muscle, a giant in height and breadth,
grasping an iron support twisted from a bench, had forced his way out to
the street, and now was using it to pry up the bricks from the sidewalk,
which in turn were seized by his companions.

Above the uproar and confusion the voice of authority, ringing out its
words of command, was heard again.

Head and shoulders above the crowd, the giant stood erect, waving his
iron bar above his head. "At 'em, men," he cried, "at 'em before they
fire!"

But as he paused, another cry arose, a frightened, childish wail, that
came from a very diminutive female clinging to his knees. "My Tomlin,"
it cried.

The giant's arm dropped, and as the crowd swept on and left him
standing, Mr. Tomlin looked down to behold the Angel, and holding fast
to her, the badly frightened but defiant personage of Joey.

The giant caught the Angel up in his arms. "Hold on to my coat," he
cried to Joey, and speedily, such of the crowd as had not swept by in
their charge against the police, fell back on either side before Mr.
Tomlin's mighty fist. Fighting desperately, he reached the edge, and
seizing Joey, dragged him across the car tracks as the crash of stones,
the breaking of glass, the sharp crack of firearms, told of the meeting
of the forces behind him.

Howls of rage, of pain, of defiance answered, followed by further
crashing of stones and splintering of glass in street lights and car
windows, and not until they were several squares removed from the scene
of action did Mr. Tomlin pause. He then laid a heavy hand on Joey. "By
all that's--" he began.

But Joey was ready for him, and hastily began to pour his earnings from
his jacket pocket in a pile upon the flagging. "Me an' Angel made it
a-singin' on the street fer to get ice fer Mis' Tomlin," the wily one
explained. And the tender-hearted giant, gazing from one small figure to
the other, forthwith began to sob like a child.

And, oh, the rejoicings of the distracted Tenement when the lost Angel
was returned! And how Joey was seized and violently threatened to be as
violently forgiven. Mrs. Tomlin, given ice to her heart's content, fell
asleep, blessing the Angel for having rescued her husband from the
almost certain hands of the law. And when, next day, it was learned that
various and sundry of Mr. Tomlin's friends, among them the red-haired
gentleman and his dark companion, had been arrested, while Mr. Tomlin
was safe at home, the Angel became more than ever the pride and idol of
the Tenement.

"There's some'n' mighty wrong," Mr. Tomlin was heard arguing soon after,
"for a man with the bone and muscle to 'em as I've got, wantin' work an'
willin' to do anything, yet havin' to starve--but whatever it is as is
wrong, I'm thinkin' mobs ain't the way to right it."

"An' if he'd only hed th' sinse to make the furrin' gintleman as could
talk the gibberish to question th' Angel choild," said Mrs. O'Malligan
indignantly, "sure an' we moight have larned all about her by this
toime, entoirely, for there's mony a thing she's tried to tell us an'
can't for the want of a worrud. But foind me a man of yer as does any
thinkin' 'thout his woman there to prompt him," she quoth
contemptuously, "an' I'll foind ye a polaceman as isn't a meddler in
other folks' affairs, as this yere mob is jist anither provin' of."




CHAPTER VI.

THE MAJOR SUPERINTENDS THE ANGEL'S EDUCATION.


"It's a nice, cool morning," said the ever sanguine Miss Bonkowski to
Joey, one day late in September, "so, if you will give me your solemn
promise--" and Miss Norma paused impressively, emphasizing her words
with nods of her blonde head, "not to go to any speakings, nor yet to
the dock to fish, nor to any fires, or to a procession, even if it's
right around the corner," and Miss Norma drew breath as she finished the
enumerating of his various exploits, "why, Angel here can play with you
until Mary Carew comes down to get her."

The Major--his cap a little more battered, his belt somewhat the worse
from constant wear, but clean as to face and hands, having just emerged
from the morning inspection of the Armory janitor, better known to the
neighborhood as Old G. A. R.--treated Miss Bonkowski to a salute and a
confidential wink, and edged up to the smiling Angel's side. "Yer jus'
leave her wid me," he responded reassuringly, "an' I ain't goin' to do
nothin' as ain't square."

And Miss Norma, whose faith in human nature, phoenix-like, ever sprang
up anew from the blighted hopes of former trust, accordingly turned her
darling over to Joey and hurried off. "For she's obliged to have some
one to play with and to get some fresh air somehow," the chorus-lady
argued for her own re-assuring, though it remains a mystery as to how
she could deceive herself into considering the garbage-scented
atmosphere of the neighborhood as fresh, "and Joey's by far the best of
the lot around here."

Meanwhile, the small subject of all this solicitude, in clean frock and
smiling good-humor, responded at once to Joey's proposal, and the two
sat down on the curbstone. In the constant companionship of their two
months' acquaintance, the little Major's growing interest in the Angel
had assumed almost fatherly proportions. Hitherto this zeal had taken
itself out in various expeditions for her entertainment similar to the
one ending in Mr. Tomlin's rescue. To-day it was produced in the shape
of a somewhat damaged peach purchased with a stray penny. But the Angel,
in her generous fashion, insisting on a division of the dainty, Joey at
first stoutly declining, weakened and took half, seeing to it, however,
that his was the damaged side.

"When yer was up there," he observed unctiously as he devoured his
portion--and he nodded his round little head toward that foggy and smoky
expanse about them, popularly believed by the population about the
Tenement to be the abode of angels--"when yer was up there, yer had
these kinder things every day, didn't yer?"

If her small ladyship's word could be taken for it, in that other life
still remembered by her, she had everything, even to hoky-poky ad
libitum, to her heart's content, though her testimony framed itself into
somewhat more halting and uncertain English.

"What did yer do up there, anyhow?" queried Joey curiously.

"Danced," the Angel declared, daintily devoting herself to her portion
of the peach, "her danced and--her danced."

This earthly vocation seemed to fail to appeal to Joey's imagination.
"Nothin' else?" he demanded anxiously. "Didn't yer never do nothin'
else?"

But the Angel had fallen to poking the green contents of the gutter with
a stick, and seemed to find the present more fascinating to contemplate
than the past.

"Didn't yer never go nowhere?" persisted Joey.

"Her went to school," the Angel admitted, or so it sounded to Joey.

"What 'ud yer do at school?" he inquired.

"Danced," was the Angel's unmistakable announcement.

Joey looked disgusted, but soon recovered and fell to revolving a new
idea in his fertile young brain.

"I know where there is a school," he remarked. "I've never went, but I
hung on ter the window-sill an' looked in, an' if yer went ter school
up there, yer oughter be goin' down here, see!" And forthwith Joey
arose.

Amiable as her small ladyship usually was, on this occasion, seeing
determination written on Joey's small countenance, she rebelled. "Angel
yants to stay here," the young lady declared, continuing to poke at the
contents of the gutter.

"I don't wanter make her cry," argued Joey wisely, then cast about in
his mind for an inducement. "They have parties to that school, they do,"
finally he observed, "fer I seen 'em settin' 'round tables an' eatin'
one day."

The guileless infant rose to the bait at once, and dropped her stick and
slipped her confiding hand in Joey's. "Angel likes to have parties," she
declared, and thus lured on, she forthwith followed Joey down the
street.

          *          *          *          *          *

"Some one to see me," repeated pretty Miss Stannard, of the Darcy
College Settlement's Free Kindergarten, and laying down her blocks she
went to the door.

On the steps outside the entrance stood a small, chubby-cheeked boy
smiling up out of knowing brown eyes from beneath a soldier's cap many
sizes too large for him, while behind him stood a slender, graceful
child with wonderful shining hair, and eyes equally as smiling.

The small boy treated the tall, pretty young lady to a most confiding
nod and a wink. "I've brought her ter school," he remarked.

"Oh, have you?" returned the young lady laughing, "then I'd better
invite you in, I suppose," and she led the way toward the entry-room
where hung some dozens of shabby hats and bonnets. "And what is your
name?" she inquired.

"Her name is Angel, it is," responded the little fellow briskly, with
emphasis on the pronoun, as if to let the young lady understand at once
that her interest need extend no further than to the prospective pupil.

"Didn't a know I are Angel?" queried the smiling cherub with her
accustomed egotistical surprise.

"And what is your other name?" questioned Miss Stannard smiling.

"She ain't got no more," returned the escort succinctly.

"And what is yours?"

"Mine--oh, I'm just the Major, I am," with off-hand loftiness.

"Indeed? And where do you live, Major?"

"Fourth Reg'ment Arm'ry," responded the Major glibly.

"And the little girl,--Angel--you said--"

The Major looked somewhat surprised, "They come from Heaven,--Angels do,
yer know," he remarked, staring a little at the tall young lady's want
of such knowledge.

"Yes," responded the pretty lady gently, "but where is she living now?"

"Round by me," said the small boy briefly, showing some restlessness.

"With her father and mother?"

The Major, staring again, shook his head, and poor Miss Stannard,
despairing, of learning anything definite from this source, asked if he
would take her there after Kindergarten, and began to untie the little
girl's cap.

Evidently gratified at this attention to his charge, the Major said that
he would, and followed the two into the large, sunny room adjoining.
"The children are just going on the circle," said the pretty young lady,
"won't you take my other hand and go too."

The Major drew back hastily. "She's come ter school," he declared
indicating the Angel, "there ain't no school in it fer me. I'm a sojer,
I am."

"Then have a chair, sir, and watch us," said the young lady, with amused
eyes, as she brought out a little red chair with polite hospitality.

The young gentleman graciously accepting it, the Angel was forthwith
borne away to join the circle of children about the ring, and to Miss
Stannard's surprise, with no more ado, joined in the game like one
familiar with it all, waving her small hands, singing gaily and, when
her turn arrived, flitting gaily about the circle until the sash strings
of her little faded dress sailed straight out behind her.

And the game at an end, without waiting for direction or guidance, the
newcomer marched with the other children about the big room and took
her place with them at one of the tables spread with entrancing green
and yellow papers. And here, absorbed in directing the work at her own
table, and her two assistant teachers equally absorbed at theirs, Miss
Stannard was presently aroused by a nudge from 'Tildy Peggins, the
freckle-faced young person employed in a capacity of janitress and
nursery maid.

"Look a-yonder to that young willain, Miss Ruth," urged 'Tildy, whose
sentiments regarding the infant populace refused, despite all the
efforts of her employers, to be tempered by Kindergarten views.

Miss Stannard looked up hastily, and so did the twenty pairs of eyes
about her table.

From the depths of one pocket the Major had produced a cigarette, and
from the mixed contents of another he had extracted a match, and as the
twenty pairs of eyes fell on him, a fascinating curl of blue smoke was
just issuing from his lips.

'Tildy Peggins folded her arms on her flat chest and gave vent to a
groan. Already, with her gloomy views on Kindergarten regeneration
versus innate depravity, she foresaw the contamination of every
half-subjugated small masculine in the room.

Miss Stannard, with a shake of her head at 'Tildy, coughed slightly.
Instantly the eyes of the school left the Major and fixed themselves
expectantly on her pretty face.

"I thought you wanted to be a soldier, Major," she observed, addressing
the small gentleman.

"I is goin' to be," returned that unabashed gentleman, calmly sticking a
thumb in his belt, and in so doing pushing his jacket aside, so as to
further expose the military trappings about his round little person,
"I's a-goin' to be a sojer in the Fourth Regiment."

"No, indeed," said Miss Ruth, "the members of the Fourth Regiment are
gentlemen, and a gentleman would never have smoked in here without
asking if he might."

The Major looked somewhat moved out of his usual imperturbability. The
curl of offending smoke ceased.

"I know a soldier," Miss Ruth went on calmly, "and what is more, he is a
member of the Fourth Regiment, but he never would have done such a
thing as you are doing."

The cigarette trembled in the Major's irresolute fingers.

"And even if you had asked first," the steady voice went on, "I would
have said no, for such a thing as smoking is never allowed in this
room."

The Major's irresolute brown eyes met Miss Stannard's resolute brown
ones. Then the cigarette went out the open window behind him and the
work at the tables went on.

Presently Miss Ruth looked up again. "Won't you come," she said
pleasantly, touching a pile of the gay papers. "Are you not tired?"

The Major shook his head decidedly. "No, he would not," and finding a
chip among the apparently inexhaustible stores of his pockets, he next
produced a knife boasting an inch of blade and went to whittling upon
'Tildy's immaculate floor.

Miss Ruth saw it all, and presently saw the chip fall to the floor and
the round head begin to nod. Then, with 'Tildy Peggins' gloomy and
disapproving eye upon her at this act of overture, she crossed the room.
"Major," said Miss Ruth, just a little plaintively, perhaps, "do you
suppose you could do something for me?"

The Major was wide awake on the instant.

"These papers," explained Miss Ruth, while 'Tildy from her work of
washing windows, shook her disapproving head, "put all like this in a
pile on the table here, and all like this over here, and this
color,--here," and before Miss Stannard had gotten over to her table
again, the Major was deep in the seductive fascinations of Kindergarten.

It was when the three teachers, with 'Tildy's help, had at last
distributed the sixty hats, hoods, and caps, and started the loitering
groups on their homeward ways, that pretty Miss Stannard, putting on her
own hat, addressed her new pupils. "Now, Major, I am ready," she said,
and the three accordingly turned their steps toward the neighborhood of
the Tenement.

Miss Ruth's small escort had quite an idea of the proper thing to do,
and pointed out the landmarks as the three went along, the Angel's
friendly hand slipped confidingly into that of her new friend.

"I did hear as so many died in this yere house of the fevers this
summer," Joey remarked cheerfully, pointing to a wretched-looking
tenement building they were passing; "they'll give yer a room there now
fer nothin' to git a good name fer the house agin."

Miss Ruth shivered as they passed.

The Major next nodded toward a dingy saloon. "Here's where I take a
schooner an' a free lunch sometimes," he remarked confidentially.

The tall young lady's brown eyes danced as she glanced down at the small
person of the Major. "And how old are you, Major?" she inquired.

"Ha'f pas' seven, the Cap'n an' Old G. A. R., they say."

"The Captain? Old G. A. R.?"

"Uh, huh! The Cap'n's a good 'un, he is. He gim' me these yere togs, he
did, an' he told Old G. A. R. I might sleep to th' Arm'ry, see?"

Miss Ruth saw, and was just about to pursue the subject of Old G. A. R.,
when the Angel dropped her hand and with a gleeful cry ran ahead, and
Miss Stannard looked up to behold two females bearing down upon them.
Miss Bonkowski and Mrs. O'Malligan in fact, nor did they pause in their
haste, until the Angel was safe in Norma's embrace and the Major
anything but safe, in the clutches of the irate Irish lady.

"An' it's yerself, ye limb, an' plaze to tell us whut ye mane by it?"
the loud-voiced Mrs. O'Malligan demanded, "a-runnin' off with the
childer agin, an' the whole Tiniment out huntin' an' her niver to be
found at all, at all?"

But the sweet-faced, tall young lady coming to his rescue, the two women
softened, and reaching the Tenement, insisted on Miss Stannard coming
in, and hearing the Angel's story.

And on the way up to Miss Bonkowski's apartment, she learned that the
Tenement, that morning, had been convulsed from cellar to garret, by the
great honor bestowed upon it. For who but the Prima Donna, the Great
Personage of Norma's professional world, had just driven away in her
carriage after a visit of an hour and the Angel never to be found at
all!

"An' ma'am," explained Mary Carew, her bony face swollen with crying,
when Miss Stannard had been installed in one of the two chairs of the
apartment, "an' ma'am, it was fer th' Angel she come. A offerin' Norma
an' me anything we'd name to give her up, such a fancy as she's taken to
her, an' wantin' her fer her own."

"And you, what did you say?" asked Miss Ruth, gently, watching Mary with
tender eyes as she held the beautiful, chattering little creature so
jealously in her arms, and thinking as she watched, of the life and
reputation commonly accorded the great singer.

"Say?" came from Miss Bonkowski quickly, her befrizzled blonde tresses
fairly a-tremble with her intensity, and sticking the hat-pin recklessly
in and out of the lace hat she had taken off, "what did we say, you ask,
and knowing, as you and every body must, the kind of life and future it
would mean for a child that takes to things like this 'n does! With all
her money and her soft, winning ways, it is better, far better, for the
child with her disposition, to starve along with Mary an' me, than grow
up to that, if it was nothing more to be afraid of than being left to
servants and hotel people and dragged around from place to place in such
a life as it is. Not that I mean, ma'am," and Miss Bonkowski spoke with
quick pride, "that being in the profession need to make any body what
they shouldn't be, for I know plenty of 'em of the best, and am one
myself, though only a Chorus, but what with what's said about this one,
even with her good heart and generous ways, she's not the one to have
our Angel, though she meant it for the best."

"An' she said," Mary Carew took it up, "as how Norma's gettin' old, and
'll be dropped afore long from the Chorus, an' she offered her, she did,
in this very room, a' here before me, to buy out a Costumer as is
leavin' the business, an' start Norma in for herself, along of her
knowin' how to run a business such as that."

"And oh girls," declared Miss Stannard as she told this part of the
story to her assistant teachers afterward, "it was the bravest thing
I've met among the poor people yet. Think of the courage of those two
women, with poverty grimmer than they have yet known, ahead of them in
all probability, yet determined to resist the temptation because they
are assured it is not well for the child. Picture making jean
pantaloons, year in, year out, at barely living wages, yet having the
courage to put the matter so resolutely aside. After that, I could not
bring myself to tell them they had done wrong in the beginning in not
notifying the authorities. Of course there is some mystery about it. I
cannot for a moment accept their explanation of it. The child, beyond
question, is well born and has been carefully trained. And she goes
about among all the strange, queer inmates of that Tenement house as
fearlessly as a little queen. But, oh, the one that is a chorus-singer!
If you could see her! So lean, so sallow, so airy and full of manner.
But I will never laugh at another elderly chorus-singer again in my
life, she is grand, she's heroic," and the pretty Kindergartner
threaded gay worsteds into needles with a vigor which lent emphasis to
her words.

"She's powerful stuck up, too," asserted the gloomy tones of 'Tildy
Peggins, and she shook her mournful head, as she moved about
straightening the disordered room for the next day, "there's a man lives
in our Tenement wanted to keep comp'ny with her, but, la, she tossed her
yellow head at his waffle cart, she did, an' she said if he'd had a
settled h'occupation she might a thought about it in time, but she
couldn't bring herself to consider a perambulating business, an' that
was all there was to it. La, maybe she is grand an' 'eroic, but she's
got a 'aughty 'eart, too, that woman has!"




CHAPTER VII.

MISS RUTH MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF OLD G. A. R.


The Angel, as the cooler weather came on, being suitably clothed by Miss
Stannard and the invisible though still generous Mrs. Tony, and the good
ladies of the Tenement seeing that she was properly fed, her little
ladyship continued to thrive, and to pursue her way, sweet and innocent,
in the midst of squalor, poverty and wickedness such as Mary and Norma
could not always hide, even from her baby eyes.

True to the promise these ladies had made, she appeared regularly at
Kindergarten in the charge of her faithful squire, the Major, whose own
interest in the daily work had never flagged since the day he first
agreed to help Miss Stannard.

It was with surprise, therefore, that, late in November, Miss Ruth
noted the absence of the two for several successive days.

"Childern's obliged to get wore out fiddlin' with beads an' paper an'
such, in time," said the perverse and unconverted 'Tildy Peggins.
"That's the reason they's constant droppin' off, an' new ones comin' in.
There ain't enough willainy in Kindergarten to keep their minds
h'occupied. They's pinin' for the streets long afore you'd h'ever
believe it,--their 'earts ain't satisfied with beads and paper,
childern's obliged to have a little willainy mixed in."

But despite 'Tildy's pessimistic views, on the fifth morning of their
absence, Miss Ruth had just determined to send around to the Tenement,
when a knock summoned her to the door.

Outside stood the smiling Angel, in her little winter cloak and hood,
her hand in that of a very large, very grizzled, and very
military-looking man, who greeted Miss Stannard with a salute reminding
her at once of Joey.

"What has become of my friend, the Major?" she inquired, ushering them
into the school-room.

"Joey couldn't come," explained the Angel, mournfully.

"It was to tell you about him, ma'am, I stepped around," replied the
man, gazing admiringly about the bright room, with its pictures, its
growing plants, its tables, and dozens of little red chairs. "It is a
pretty place now, I must say, and it's no wonder the little chap likes
to come here. He's been that worried, and fretting so about the little
one not getting to school, that I promised him I'd march her 'round here
every day if he'd call a halt on his fretting."

"He is sick, then?" Miss Ruth inquired.

"Well, it didn't seem as if it was enough to lay him off duty,"
responded the man, as he regarded Miss Ruth with friendly gaze; "he's a
knowin' little shaver, the Major is, and great on tryin' to help me."

"Are you the friend that he calls Old G. A. R.?" inquired Miss Ruth,
with sudden intuition, as she smiled back into the weather-beaten face.

The old soldier chuckled. "He's told you about that, has he?
'Old G. A. R.!' Great name, ain't it?"

"Why does he call you by it?"

"Grand Army of the Republic, ma'am. I'm a member, and I reckon I do
anecdote about it overmuch at times. The Reg'ment round there, they
dubbed me that."

"And the Major?"

"That's right, ma'am, for'ard march! I'm gettin' to it. He was in the
Arm'ry with me, the other day, a-pretendin' to help me clean up, and he
fell off one of the cannon he was monkeyin' round. He didn't seem so bad
hurt, at first, but somehow, after I come to think it over, he hasn't
seemed to want to move round since, so I lay it to that."

"Have you had a doctor to see him?" asked Miss Ruth, waving the groups
of arriving children on to 'Tildy's care.

"No, ma'am, I haven't. The officer that took the fancy to the little
chap and pays for his eatin' along with me at the restaurant, he's been
out of town for six weeks, and after leaving the baby here, I am on my
way to his office now, to see if he has got back," and he stepped toward
the door.

"I will take Angel home and stop by there and see Joey," said Miss Ruth.

"We'll be happy to have you, ma'am," and with a salute, the old soldier
marched out the door.

          *          *          *          *          *

"Indade, Miss Ruthie, an' it's proud I am to go wid ye," said Mrs.
O'Malligan some hours later, in response to Miss Ruth's request to go
over to the Armory with her, "just ye wait till I starts the Angel
choild up the steps," and Mrs. O'Malligan accordingly, was soon
accompanying Miss Ruth through the big door of the Armory.

The old soldier met them and led the way into a neat box of a room, very
orderly, very spotless. Here, on a cot, lay the Major, his eyes turned
to meet them expectantly. It was quite pitiful to see how these few days
had changed him into the white little chap looking up from the pillow.

"Well, Major," began Miss Ruth, cheerily, and at sound of her bright,
animated voice, a figure in the shadow on the other side of the cot
looked up.

"Why, Mr. Dilke," cried Miss Ruth, at sight of the young and very
properly attired gentleman who stood up to greet her.

The young gentleman came round and shook hands with evident pleasure.
"So you are the wonderful '_Teacher_,' Miss Stannard?"

"And you are the '_Cap'n_'?" retorted Miss Ruth.

Here the Major, as he would have phrased it, "caught on." "She said yer
was a gentleman what wouldn't a-smoked before ladies, she did,"
volunteered Joey.

Miss Ruth blushed and laughed and blushed again. "Well, he wouldn't,
Joey," she reiterated stoutly.

Whereupon the boyishly smooth face of Mr. Dilke colored too, and being
very big and blonde and diffident, he blushed very red indeed, while
Joey, seeing something up, tried to wink his roguish eyes but failed for
very weakness and found them full of tears instead.

"Where does it hurt?" asked Miss Ruth gently, leaning over him.

The Major winked indignantly. "Sojers aint goin' to make no fuss if
does hurt, Old G. A. R. he says so!"

Old G. A. R. in the background gave vent to a sudden chuckle. "Obey your
superior officers, Major, afore anything," he corrected.

"Faith I'll jist take him in me lap an' say whir he's hurted for
meself," said Mrs. O'Malligan briskly and forthwith laid her energetic
hand upon the little fellow. At her well meant but rough handling, the
child cried out, turning white to the lips.

"Howly Mither, forgive me," cried Mrs. O'Malligan.

Miss Ruth turned away to hide her tears. "Have you had a doctor yet?"
she inquired.

"No, I had just gotten here a moment ahead of you," explained Mr. Dilke.

"Well," said Miss Ruth, decidedly, "whether it proves serious or not, he
ought to go to St. Luke's and be properly nursed, and if there happens
to be a free cot vacant, I will have no trouble getting him in."

Mr. Dilke turned quickly. "Don't stop for that," he said, "use me,--I
mean,--don't let the cost of it interfere,--I'll be very glad,--you
know----"

Miss Ruth beamed at the young man whom she knew to be very rich indeed.
"Just take charge of a Free Kindergarten, Mr. Dilke, if you ever really
want to properly appreciate your blessings and privileges," she said, "I
am never so sordid in my desire for wealth, as when I stand helpless,
with the knowledge of the suffering around me, that money can remedy or
at least, alleviate."

"Let me walk with you to St. Luke's," begged Mr. Dilke, "and you can
tell me something more about it all if you will." And leaving Joey to
Mrs. O'Malligan, until their return, the two started off.

"You've evidently been very good to Joey," Miss Stannard remarked
graciously, as they went along.

Mr. Dilke blushed furiously, "Who? I? No more than the other men in the
Regiment. Now a fellow could hardly help liking the little chap, could
he?" and he regarded his pretty companion as if seeking justification in
her answer.

"How did it ever begin?" inquired Miss Stannard.

"Through the old man--the janitor, you know. The boy's mother was a
daughter of a dead soldier, comrade to Old G. A. R. Good for nothing
husband, and that sort of thing, you know, and always runnin' to Old G.
A. R. for protection and help too, I suspect. When she died, the old
fellow didn't have the money, and appealed to some of us fellows to help
bury her. And then, it turned out, here was the boy. First we agreed to
his staying at the Armory a day or so, then a week, then longer, and by
that time the knowing little monkey had made his own cause good. Here we
are,--and we'll just arrange, while here, to take a doctor back with
us."

It was late that afternoon that Miss Ruth, having remained to see the
Major safely asleep after his removal to St. Luke's Hospital, came down
the steps of that institution with her pretty eyes all dim with crying,
the doctor's words ringing in her ears, "Poor little chap," he had said,
"it's merely a question of time."




CHAPTER VIII.

THE ANGEL MEETS AN OLD FRIEND.


A few days later Mrs. O'Malligan, in her best attire, and Miss
Bonkowski, also gotten up regardlessly even to an added bloom upon her
cheeks, sallied forth in the face of the first snowfall, to take the
Angel to St. Luke's Hospital, where, by appointment, Miss Ruth was to
meet them.

When in time they reached the building and Miss Stannard led the way up
to the Children's Ward, a white-capped nurse came forward between the
rows of little beds each with its child occupant, her finger on her
lips. "He is so much weaker to-day," she explained, "I would say he had
better not see any one, except that he will fret, so please stay only a
few moments," and she led them to where Joey lay, his white bed shut off
from his little neighbors by a screen. His eyes were closed and a young
resident physician was standing by the bed.

"We thought he was going for a while this morning," whispered the nurse,
but, low as she spoke, the Major heard. A ghost of a twinkle was in his
brown eyes as they opened and sought the doctor's. "I fooled 'em that
time, didn't I, Doc?" he demanded, and one trembling lid attempted its
old-time wink.

"You wanted Angel, Joey dear," said Miss Ruth, "and she has come to see
you."

The Angel's face was full of doubt and trouble, her eyes dark with
gathering tears. Frightened at this something she half-divined, but
could not understand, she drew near doubtfully. "Angel loves her Joey,
her does," she asserted, however, as if in refutation of her fears.

"Show her--my--gun," whispered Joey, and from the table where his eyes
could feast upon it, the nurse lifted a small rifle.

"The Cap'n give it ter me,--so I could be a--member of th'
Reg'ment--_now_--see? Ain't it a dandy--Angel?"

The child nodded gravely, but all the while her little breast was
heaving with the gathering sobs. Seeing Miss Norma also in tears, Miss
Ruth motioned her to take the Angel ahead, and leaving Mrs. O'Malligan
speaking to the nurse, Miss Ruth followed slowly after, talking with the
doctor as she went.

A moment later, the ward was startled by a cry from the hall beyond,
"Yosie,--Angel's Yosie!"

Miss Ruth and the doctor hurried out. In the hall in a rolling chair sat
a young woman to whose knees the Angel was clinging, amid sobs and
little cooing cries of joy. "Yosie, Angel's Yosie."

"Poor girl!" ejaculated the young doctor, "this may lead to her
identification. We do not even know her name," he explained to Miss
Stannard. "A case of paralysis,--almost helpless. Never has spoken since
brought here. Yes," in answer to Miss Ruth's eager inquiries, "she has
gotten so that she can make signs for yes and no."

At once Miss Stannard turned to the girl, from whose lap Norma was
trying to draw the expostulating Angel. "Do you know Angel?" she asked,
her hand on the child as she spoke.

There was a slight affirmative droop to the eyelids, while the gaze
beneath was fixed imploringly on Miss Ruth.

"Are you Rosy?" she asked.

"My Yosie, it _is_ my Yosie!" declared the Angel, with one of her little
bursts of baby rage, pulling away from Norma and stamping her foot,
frantic that any doubt should exist.

At this point, Mrs. O'Malligan, who had been following in her
comfortable fashion, unconscious of any excitement, drew near. Suddenly
there was an excited cry from that lady. "Howly Mither, an' it's Mrs.
Buckley's own sister, Rosy O'Brien, fer sure!"

The wild eyes of the sick girl turned towards Mrs. O'Malligan with signs
of recognition. The doctor repeated his story.

"She must have been Angel's nurse," said Miss Stannard.

"An' was it the darlint's nurse ye war, Rosy O'Brien?" inquired Mrs.
O'Malligan.

"Yes," signalled the eyelids, whereupon Mrs. O'Malligan, swaying her
body to and fro, and clapping her hands, burst forth suddenly, "I say
through wid it all, I say through wid it all! Ye brought the Angel
choild to the Tiniment wid ye to say your sister, now, didn't ye, Rosy,
me jewel?"

The good Irish lady waited for the affirmative droop from the eager
eyes.

"An' maybe ye found the door locked, an' not knowin' yer sister had
moved away an' Miss Johnson, what goes to the car stables a-cleanin' by
the day, livin' in her room now, ye set the choild down in the empty
room a-nixt to it, an' run down to ask me as to whir yer sister had
gone, now, didn't ye, Rosy O'Brien?" and Mrs. O'Malligan's garlanded
bonnet fell over one ear in the good soul's excitement.

Thus far apparently she was right.

"An' I wasn't to home, for sure I niver seen ye," ventured Mrs.
O'Malligan, her hands now on her hips as she gazed at the girl and
pondered.

She was right again.

"An' what happened thin, I niver can say no further!"

The doctor, referring to a note book, spoke next. "She was brought
here," he said, "on the seventh of last July, about six o'clock in the
evening, having been knocked down by a horse at the corner of Camden and
Lisiden Streets."

"Whist!" cried Mrs. O'Malligan, her shawl fallen to the floor, her
bonnet now hanging by the strings down her back, "that's our own corner,
an' it's as plain to me now as the nose on yer face! Not findin' me to
home, ye were runnin' over to the grocery to find out from yer sister's
husband's brother Bill whativer had become of the family!"

The sharp Irish lady had hit it again, and Miss Ruth here interrupted to
ask Miss Bonkowski if she could remember the date on which the child had
been found in the vacant room. After some thought and debate, Miss Norma
declared it to have been on the morning of the eighth of July, because
her own birthday came on the fifteenth and she remembered remarking the
child had then been with them a week.

But here the whole party came to a standstill, and the wild, imploring
look came back in poor Rosy O'Brien's eyes.

The doctor laid his hand on her shoulder reassuringly. "Don't fret, my
girl, it will all come right now in time. It is no wonder," turning to
Miss Stannard, "she has been so slow getting better. I have said a
hundred times the girl had something on her mind."

Miss Ruth turned to Rosy again. "Does the child's mother, or do her
people live here in the city?" she inquired.

The eyelids failed to move, which according to the doctor meant _no_.

"What will we do," sighed Miss Ruth, "for the more the child is asked,
the more perplexed we get, and now----"

"Sure an' we'll ask Mrs. Buckley, Rosy's sister, an' she'll tell us all
about it," said the practical Mrs. O'Malligan. "I remember well of her
tellin' me of the foine wages Rosy was a-gittin; along of her goin' off
so fur wid some rich lady as a nurse."

At this hopeful point the doctor interfered, thinking best to prevent
any further exciting of his patient, and accordingly wheeled her back
to her ward, leaving the others to soothe the terror of the child, at
seeing hope vanish with Rosy.

Pausing outside the big hospital in a trembling and excited little
group, Miss Stannard detailed her plans. As the snow was coming down
steadily, Miss Bonkowski should return to the Tenement at once with the
excited, sobbing child, and Mrs. O'Malligan should take Miss Ruth to
find Mrs. Buckley, the sister of poor Rosy O'Brien.

          *          *          *          *          *

"And do you know," explained Miss Ruth that evening, to Mr. Dilke, who
had fallen into a way of calling quite frequently indeed, of late, "and
do you know, this woman, this Mrs. Buckley would not believe us, but
insisted that her sister, Rosy O'Brien, as well as the child her sister
had nursed, were drowned in that terrible ferry-boat disaster last July.
After what seemed to me hours of catechising, I got the story from her.

"A year ago, as I finally found out, her sister, this same Rosy
O'Brien, went South with a Mr. and Mrs. De Leon Breaux, whose child she
had been nursing at Narragansett during the summer.

"This spring, Mrs. Buckley, living then in the Tenement where the child
was afterward found, received a letter from Rosy, saying she would be in
the city with her mistress for a few days in July on their way to the
seashore for the summer.

"Meanwhile Mrs. Buckley moved, and being unable to write, left her new
address with Mrs. O'Malligan. But the summer passing and no Rosy
appearing, in September Mrs. Buckley grew anxious and got a friend to
write to the Breaux' address for her, inclosing a letter to Rosy.

"In answer came a reply from Mr. Breaux, which letter Mrs. Buckley
showed me. It stated that on the seventh of last July Rosy O'Brien and
the child, '_our little Angelique_,' the letter called her, had been
drowned while crossing the river on the ferry.

"Mrs. Breaux and her young sister, with Rosy O'Brien and the child, had
reached the city the day before, having come by steamer from New
Orleans, their home.

"According to the statement of a waiter at the hotel. Rosy, tired of
waiting for the return of the two ladies from a shopping expedition, and
having been promised the afternoon, started off soon after lunch with
the child, saying that she was going across the river on the ferry to
see her sister. This was the last seen of them.

"Mr. Breaux hurried North in response to his wife's summons, and some
days following the ferry disaster, which occurred shortly after the girl
left the hotel, a body was found in the river, which from its black
cashmere dress, white apron and plain gold ring, was identified as that
of poor Rosy.

"The girl had been taken on the recommendation of a former mistress and,
as so often is the case, the Breaux' knew neither the name nor the
address of this sister, and having,--in addition to the papers being
filled with the matter,--advertised in vain, the body was buried and,
despairing finally of recovering their child's body, they returned
South. Though don't think," said pretty Ruth suddenly regarding Mr.
Dilke's attentive face while she laughed, "that I received the story
from Mrs. Buckley in any such direct fashion. Such people are not only
illogical and irrelevant, they are secretive,--if ever you have to do
with them as my work leads me to, you'll understand what I mean. But to
continue with Mrs. Buckley. In order to convince her that neither Rosy
nor the child, despite her evidence, were dead, I took her straight back
to the hospital, and as she then admitted Rosy to be Rosy, any lingering
doubts were put at rest. And now you see why I was so relieved when you
came this evening. Mother has no better business head than I have, and I
want you to help me determine how best to let these Breaux know the
child is alive."

But Mr. Dilke, though far from a stupid young man, confessed himself a
little dazed by Miss Ruth's rapid and excited story. Whereupon,
laughing, she went over it again, adding, "And here is the address and
the name is De Leon Breaux, and how shall we word the telegram?"

And after much speculation the following was written and sent:

    "Nurse-girl, Rose O'Brien, found in hospital, paralyzed.
    Child safe and well.

                    "VAN ALSTINE DILKE,

                                  "HOTEL ST. GEORGE."




CHAPTER IX.

MARY CAREW IS TEMPTED.


When Norma, on reaching home with the tired child, finished her story,
which, truth to tell, lost nothing of its dramatic possibilities in her
telling, Mary Carew looked up with her face so set and white that Norma,
who had been too intent in her recital to notice the gradual change in
the other's manner, was startled.

"Don't take on so, Mary," she cried, removing the child's wraps as she
spoke, "I've always warned you she wasn't any deserted child, haven't
I?" but there was a real tenderness in Norma's voice as she reminded the
other of it.

"You'd better get your supper," Mary replied, "it's near time for you to
be going," and she pushed her work aside and held out her arms for the
child, her face softening as it did for nothing else in the world.

Tired, cold, dazed with crying, the drooping little soul crept into
Mary's arms, which closed hungrily and held her close as the sobs began
to come again.

Unlike her usual self, Mary let Norma prepare the supper unaided, while
she sat gazing down on the flushed little face pillowed on her arm, and
drew off the broken shoes, chafing and rubbing the cold, tired feet with
her hand.

She wanted no supper, she declared shortly in response to Norma's call,
but on being pressed, came to the table and drank a little tea
thirstily, and fed the sleepy child from her own plate.

"Now don't take on so, Mary, don't fret about it while I'm gone," Norma
begged as she hurried off to her nightly duties. "I'll miss her just as
much as you, if it does turn out that we have to give her up, and for
the darling's own sake, Mary, we ought to be glad to think she's going
back to her own."

But Mary, laying the sleeping child down in the crib, burst forth as the
door closed, "An' it's Norma Bonkowski can tell me I ought to be glad!
She can tell me that, and then say she'll miss her the same as me! It's
little then she knows about my feelings,--for it'll be to lose the one
bright thing outer my life as has ever come in it. 'Go back to her own!'
Like as not her own's a mother like them fine ones I see on the Avenoos
as leaves their little ones to grow up with hired nurses. 'Give her
up--give--her up--' Norma says so easy like,--when every word chokes
me--" and struggling against her sobs, Mary fell on her knees beside the
crib, burying her face in the covers, "an' I must go on sittin' here day
after day sewin', an' my precious one gone; stitchin' an' stitchin', one
day jus' like another stretchin' on ahead, long as life itself, an' no
little feet a-patterin' up the stairs, an' no little voice a-callin' on
me,--nothin' to live for, nothin' to keep me from thinkin' an' thinkin'
till I'm nigh to goin' crazy with the stitchin'--give her up?"--a wild
look was on Mary's face as she raised it suddenly, a desperate one in
her eyes--"I'll not give her up--she's mine----"

For a moment she gazed at the flushed face framed about with the sunny
hair, then she rose, and, moving about the room with feverish haste,
she gathered together certain of the garments which hung from nails
about the walls, and rolled them into a bundle. Then from between the
mattress and the boards of the bed she drew an old purse, and counted
its contents.

"Two dollars and seventy-five,--eighty-five, ninety,--that's mine,--the
rest is Norma's," and she returned the remainder to the hiding-place.
Then, putting on her own hat and shawl, she lifted the drowsy child,
still dressed, and slipping on her cloak, rolled her in addition, in the
shawl found with her that July morning almost five months before.

Then grimly picking up child and bundle, with one guilty, frightened
look about the room that for so many years had meant home to her, she
went out the door and hurried cautiously down the steps and out into the
snowy night.

          *          *          *          *          *

It was half-past twelve when Norma Bonkowski, returning, climbed the
stairs of the Tenement wearily. She was cold, for her clothes were
thin; she was tired, for the day had been a hard one; she was
dispirited, for the manager had been more than usually sharp and
critical of her performance that night.

When she entered her door the room was dark. The lamp had burned itself
out and the room was filled with the sickening smell. The fire, too, was
out, save for a few red embers. With a sudden realization that something
was wrong, Norma groped about the littered mantel-shelf for a match,
then hastily lit an end of candle. Bed and crib were empty, half the
nails bare of their garments.

"Gone!" cried Norma, beginning to wring her hands. Intuitively she felt
what had happened. Desperate at the thought of losing her darling, Mary
Carew had fled.

But in a moment a re-assuring look replaced the fright on the blue,
pinched features. "I know Mary better than she knows herself," declared
the optimistic Norma, "she'll be back," and tossing her blonde head
resolutely, she threw aside her hat and cape and began to rekindle the
fire.

"I'll put on the tea-kettle, too," she told herself, "and be real
comfortable and extravagant for once, and have a cup of tea ready when
they come," for the good lady had no intention of going to bed, assuring
herself she would not sleep if she did. So, moving about, she refilled
the lamp, and drawing the machine nearer the stove, began to sew where
Mary had left off. "I wonder how she thinks to make a livin'," Norma
asked herself, smiling grimly, "seein' the machine's left behind. Poor
Mary! I know her too well, she'll be back before morning."

One, two,--then three, a neighboring church clock tolled, and Norma
stitched and waited, stitched and waited. Several times she fell asleep,
her head upon the machine, to awake with a start, hurry to the door and
listen.

A little before four she heard a step, and running to the door caught
poor Mary as she staggered in, half-sinking with her burdens. Taking the
frightened, wailing child and putting her down by the fire, Norma
dragged Mary to a chair.

"Hush," she commanded, when Mary tried to speak, "I know--I understand,"
and for once regardless of the child's comfort, she dragged the sodden
shoes from Mary's feet, drew off the wet skirts and wrapped her in
anything, everything, warm she could find. By this time Mary was sobbing
wildly, and Norma, half-distracted, turned to draw the tea and to toast
some slices of the stale bread she had waiting.

"Now," she said, jerking the table around before Mary, then sitting down
and taking up the child, "you drink that, Mary Carew, before you dare to
say one word!"

The child responded promptly to the warmth and food and began to
chatter. "C'rew did take Angel away, Norma, and it was cold and Angel
cwied, and C'rew cwied, but the nice lady sang."

"I tried to run off with her," sobbed Mary, "but the Lord stood right in
my way an' turned me back."

"Whatever do you mean, Mary?" demanded Norma.

"Just that, just what I said. I was a-runnin' off so's to keep her fer
my own, an' th' Lord stopped me an' sent me back."

The child, nodding on Norma's knee like a rosy little Mandarin, caught
the sacred name. "I p'ay the Lord mine and Joey's and eve'ybody's soul
to keep," she murmured with drowsy effort, thinking C'rew was urging her
to say the little prayer Miss Ruth had taught her.

"He will, He will," said Mary Carew with awed emphasis, "if ever I
doubted it before, Norma, I know now He will. I had been walkin' a good
while after I left here, for I had laid my plans hasty-like, to cross
the river an' get a room on the other side, for I was jus' outer my
head, Norma, along of the thought of losin' her,--an' as I said, I had
been walkin' I don' know how long, plannin' as I went, when the darlin'
woke up, an' begun to cry. An' jus' then a man opened a door to come out
of a place as had a great sign up, an' in the light as come out with
him, he caught sight of us.

"'Haven't you no place to go fer shelter, my poor woman?' he says, for I
was kinder breathless, an' pantin', fer the darlin' an' the bundle was a
weight to carry. But I was that tired out, I couldn't say nothin' but
jus' begin to cry. Seem' which he says, 'This is one of the
All-Night-Missions, come in an' I will see if you may stay until
morning.'

"Thinkin' as how th' child might be sufferin' with the cold, I follered
him in, a-plannin' to leave at daylight an' get across the river. I set
down on a bench where he pointed me, an' when I got my breath I begun to
look around.

"It was a nice place, Norma, with picters round th' walls an' a good
fire an' people sittin' round listenin' to a man talkin', an' when he
stopped, a lady begun to sing a song about some sheep as were lost.

"Angel here, she had stopped crying soon as she got warm, an' now she
set up, peart an' smilin', pleased to death with the singin'. An' when
she was done her song, the lady went to talkin', an' right along, Norma,
she was talkin' straight at me. It mus' have been th' Lord as tol' her
to do it, else how did she know?

"'Rachel,' says she, an' I reckon this Rachel's another poor such a one
as me, don't you, Norma?--'Rachel a cryin' for her children an' there
wasn't any comfort for her because they weren't there!' That's how she
begun. 'There isn't no love,' she said, 'no love on earth like the love
a mother has for her child, you might take it away,' she said, 'an' try
to fill its place with money an' everything good in life, but you can't
make her stop wantin' her child an' thinkin' about it, not if you was to
separate them fifty years; or you might try to beat it out of a mother
or starve it out of her, but if the mother love had ever been there,
it'd be there still.' That's what she said, Norma. An' she s'posed like
the child was lost an' she said, 'even if there was a lot of children
besides that a one, would she stay at home, contented like, with them as
was safe? No,' she said, 'that mother wouldn't, she'd start out and go
hunt for the one as was lost,--even to faintin' along the way, till she
found the child or give up an' died. That's how the Lord cares for
us'--she said, but I didn't hear no more after that, for I jus' set
there turned like to stone, goin' over what she said, the darlin' asleep
again in my lap. An' seems like I must a set there for hours, Norma,
fightin' against the Lord.

"'An' if you as ain't her mother wants her so,' at last, somethin'
inside says to me, 'how much more must th' mother what's lost her want
her?' and at that, Norma, the Lord won an' I got up an' come back with
the child."




CHAPTER X.

THE MAJOR OBEYS ORDERS.


"He's going fast." So the nurse whispered to Miss Stannard, as with Mr.
Dilke and Old G. A. R., she came in that December afternoon. As the
three neared the little bed, shut off by the screens from the rest of
the ward, they found the Angel already there in the arms of a tall, dark
gentleman, while by Joey's pillow knelt a slender lady with shining hair
and grave, sweet eyes like the Angel's.

The Major tried to smile a welcome. "They've come--ter--carry--Angel
home, they have," he whispered, "her dad--an' her--mammy."

The white hand of the Angel's "Mammy," took Joey's softly and her eyes
were full of tears. "Joey is going home too," she said.

The Major's eyes wandered questioningly "The big--Angel's--come to get
th' little Angel--but--my Mammy--ain't come--to get me?"

"She has not come, Joey dear," the soft voice explained, "because she is
waiting for you. Joey is going to her."

The little voice was very weak now,--very wistful. "Goin'--now?" asked
the Major.

"Yes, Joey."

His whisper could hardly be understood when after a long pause, he
spoke again. "I--want--th' Cap'n--ter--gimme--th'--order,--'cause--
I--b'long--ter--th' Reg'ment."

"What order, Major?" came from the Captain huskily.

"Old--G.--A.--R.--he knows--" the Major's voice could just be caught
now.

Old G. A. R. who had given the order to those little feet so many times,
knew and understood, and his big voice rolled out with suspicious
unsteadiness now,--"Attention--Company!--Forward--" then the old
soldier's voice broke as the little eyelids fluttered. Old G. A. R.
could not go on.

"--March!" came softly from Van Alstine Dilke, and with a ghost of his
old, roguish smile the Major's eyes closed, as he obeyed orders.




CHAPTER XI.

TELLS OF THE TENEMENT'S CHRISTMAS.


The Angel had but a week in which to prepare Christmas for the Tenement,
but with the help of her marshaled forces she did it. With such a
company of grateful assistants as her Father, her Mother, and the pretty
young Aunt or "Tante" as the Angel called her, all things seemed
possible.

A Christmas Tree it was decreed by her small ladyship her Tenement
should have, and Mrs. O'Malligan's first floor front, failing entirely
in height or breadth to accommodate it, Mr. Dilke came forward and
offered Miss Angelique the Armory in the name of the Fourth Regiment.

And such a Tree! How it towered to the oaken roof and lost itself among
the beams, and laden, festooned, and decorated, how proudly it spread
its great branches out to the balconies!

Mrs. O'Malligan, alone, of all the Tenement, was let into the secret,
and when it was finally disclosed, how the hearts of the favored
fluttered as the Angel delivered her invitations,--every lady, every
lady's husband, and every son and daughter of the Tenement being bidden
to come. Not to steal in at the back door, as if the Armory was ashamed
of its guests, but to walk proudly around the square and enter boldly in
at the front doors of the building. All of which tended to raise the
self-respect of the Tenement, whose spirits went up very high indeed.

And on that eventful Christmas Day, when the guests who were bidden had
arrived, it was discovered that the object most desired of each good
lady's heart, was to be found on, or around the base of that Tree.
Perhaps if Mrs. O'Malligan had explained the meanings of the many
mysterious conferences that had taken place lately in her first floor
front, the ladies might better have understood.

There was a pretty carpet, as well as lace curtains, long the desire of
little Mrs. Tomlins' ambition, the set of "chiny" dishes dear to another
good lady, a dress for this one, a bonnet, a nice rocking chair for
that,--with new hats, pipes and tobacco around for the men,--and in
addition for Mr. Tomlin, an entire suit of clothes and an overcoat, did
that wonderful Tree shed upon his proud shoulders.

Candy, nuts, and fruit were there in abundance, open to all, while the
children paused,--awed, under a deluge of toys such as their eyes had
never beheld the likeness of before.

Nor was this all,--for somewhere about that Tree, hung a document, which
being delivered, revealed to Miss Norma Bonkowski that she was now the
owner and proprietor of that same Costumer's establishment she had so
coveted,--while a most innocent and ordinary looking little book bearing
Mary Carew's name told the secret of a sum of money safely in bank, so
sufficient that never again need that grim phantom, the poor-house,
threaten to overshadow the end as it had the beginning of Mary's life.

As for Mrs. O'Malligan,--who had so successfully betrayed the secrets
of her neighbors, she was the most surprised of all to find her own
discovered. For, learning that the O'Malligans' savings toward "a house
of our own over th' river wid a goat an' a bit of a pig-sty," still
lacked a small sum of being sufficient, the Angel had accordingly
completed the amount.

And then the Tenement, weary with the accumulations of pleasure and
surprise, had taken itself home.

No one had been forgotten. Even the sixty little Kindergartens, through
the combined munificence of Mr. Dilke and the Angel, were, according to
the gloomy prophecies of 'Tildy Peggins as she waited upon them at the
feast, "a stuffed to their little stomicks' heverlastin' undoin'." And
Old G. A. R., from the depths of a new arm-chair, tried to solace his
lonely old heart with whiffs of fragrant tobacco from a wonderful new
pipe.

Neither was Joey forgotten in this time of rejoicing, for St. Luke's was
made glad that Christmas Day when the Fourth Regiment endowed a child
cot's "In memory of The Little Major."

Even Rosy O'Brien, whose one act of unfaithfulness had been so terribly
punished, was made happy by the news her little Angelique brought her,
that now since she was freed of her wearing secret, her health would
begin to return. And in time it did, and long after, when her tongue
could again frame its words, she dictated such a letter of contrition
and remorse to Mrs. Breaux, that that gentle heart's last feelings
against her were forgotten. In this letter, too, the poor girl related
the happenings of the afternoon when she left the Hotel.

Allured by the shop windows, she and her charge had stopped so often
that on reaching the river, they learned of the accident which had just
taken place in mid-river. At this, the girl had hurried back and crossed
by the bridge.

On reaching the Tenement finally, and finding her sister's door locked,
and beginning to feel anxious about returning, on the impulse of the
moment, that she might go down the faster, being breathless with the
climb up the steep and broken stairs, she set the tired and sleepy
child down on her shawl in the adjoining room, whose door stood open,
and hurried down to find Mrs. O'Malligan and beg a scrap of paper to
write a few lines to put under her sister's door.

Again Fate was against her. Mrs. O'Malligan's door was locked, and she
determined to run across to the corner grocery to beg a bit of paper and
pencil from Mr. Buckley's brother Bill who clerked there, and learn
something of the absent family. And here, while crossing the street in
nervous haste, she had been knocked down in a press of vehicles,--and so
the long chapter of strange accidents was set going.

          *          *          *          *          *

A few days after Christmas the prima donna of The Garden Opera House was
found in her luxurious sitting-room, by her maid, face downward on the
couch,--in tears, the result of a state of mind, caused, as it proved,
by a visit from the little Angelique and her beautiful mother.

"How can I ever thank you for your generous impulse," Mrs. Breaux had
said, in impulsive, sweet fashion, taking the wayward, beautiful, young
creature's hand in hers, "or how can I ever be grateful enough to the
good God for surrounding my darling with such love and preserving her,
as He has done, from the evils of this terrible city," and she had cried
and trembled even then, with the child there against her knee, calling
and prattling to the green and yellow parrot on his gilded perch.

"If only some one could have understood all the poor child tried to
tell," said the prima donna, "but her dear, funny little lisp--"

"It is no wonder they could not," cried the mother in quick exoneration
of her child's Tenement friends, "her speech was a comical mixture of
her father's French, my English, and the nurse's Irish brogue,--even Mr.
Breaux gave up often in despair, and would turn for me to interpret."

It followed, then, that Angelique had been brought to tell the great
singer good-bye, and in speaking of her first meeting with her at the
Opera House, the prima donna referred to the child's wonderful grace,
her poise. "She has more than talent," the professional woman said,
"she has genius."

"It is a love of motion born in her," replied the mother, "my sisters
have it before her. Angelique danced actually before she could talk, and
my sister took her to dancing school and kindergarten when she was
little more than a baby, because it seemed such a pleasure to the
child."

And then it so happened the singer was led to speak of her own life, of
her wretched, motherless childhood, her poverty, the discovery of her
voice and her subsequent success.

"A success that sometimes seems but ashes in my mouth," she sobbed, as
the young mother gathered her in her arms and comforted her with words
which to her impulsive, untaught, undisciplined heart were as "apples of
gold," and which sank too deep to ever be forgotten. And it was
following this visit that her maid found her in tears.

          *          *          *          *          *

Pretty Miss Stannard sighed, as with Mr. Dilke in attendance, she was
walking up from the station, having seen Angelique, her mother, father,
and Tante off for their southern home. "How nice," she sighed, "for them
to have been able to show their gratitude as they have; money can do
anything."

But Mr. Dilke, who, of late had had reason to question the desirability
of being a rich young man, since the conscientious and analytical young
person by his side had returned an unfavorable answer to a certain
matrimonial proposition on his part, alleging her inability to determine
how far her affections were biased by sordidness. So Mr. Dilke shook his
head and took a sidelong glance at his companion's pretty profile. "No,
money cannot," he returned promptly in refutation of her statement, "all
mine cannot give me the one thing that makes the rest seem worth while."

"Nor would you want that one thing if it could," returned Miss Stannard
quite as promptly, though what little of her profile Mr. Dilke could
catch sight of now, so attractive did something prove across the
way--grew a beautiful rosy red as she spoke,--"no, money could not give
you that. I've thought and thought until I am quite--convinced--of
that--though if you just could be poor,--real nice and poverty-stricken
long enough to test me,--I'd always feel safer--you know----"

And when, in time, a successor was found to supply Miss Stannard's place
at the Darcy Settlement's Free Kindergarten, it was to see the Angel in
her beautiful southern home that Mr. Van Alstine took his pretty, young
wife. And there, whom did they find,--her face all softened and
transfigured with happiness, tending her beloved charge with jealous
care--but Mary Carew!


THE END.



          *          *          *          *          *


Sunbeam Stories and Others.

BY

ANNIE FLINT.

_With cover design by Dora Wheeler Keith, and seven full-page
illustrations by Dora Wheeler Keith, Meredith Nugent and Izora
C. Chandler._

_Square, 12mo. Cloth, $1.00._

------

"There is a touch of pure poetic fancy in each of the tales,
and the sunbeams here invested with life and tiny human forms,
are lovable and mirth-provoking imps.... The children, too, are
real children, and there is no mawkish sentimentality, but an
unforced, tender pathos in the story of little Tom Riley, who
was 'mos twelve,' but who had a heart big enough for a man, and
so skilfully is it told that a child may read and miss much of
the sadness of it. In and out and everywhere play the sunbeams,
as merry, mischievous and kindly a set of sprites as any in the
realms of fairyland."--_The Sun_, New York.

In these stories, the Sunbeams are made to talk and laugh and
play, just like children. They are delightful. Sometimes when
they are naughty, Father Sun shuts them up in a cloud all day,
where it is wet and rainy, and then they get good and promise
not to tease and be bad any more. And then he lets them out,
and they come down among the flowers and children and make
everything bright and happy. The fancy is pretty, and we are
sure the little children will thoroughly enjoy the little
Sunbeams. Pretty pictures and fine press-work and paper, make
it a beautiful book.--_Christian Observer_, Louisville, Ky.

"The stories are fascinating--rivalling the best works of
imagination. For purity and simplicity of style and diction,
they are classic."--LOCKE RICHARDSON.

------

BONNELL, SILVER & CO.,
PUBLISHERS,
24 West 22d Street, New York.




The Log of the Lady Gray.

BY

LOUISE SEYMOUR HOUGHTON.

_Cloth. Price 60 Cents._

------

The "ship's company" that embarked one May morning for a
holiday cruise on the "cat-boat" _Lady Gray_, consisted
according to "the log," of the skipper, two cabin-boys, one
ship's clerk, one small child, and two supernumeraries. The
ship's clerk, who kept "the log," was a young girl, the small
child was a much younger girl, and the supernumeraries were two
dolls, who came in for a fair share of adventure, although they
did not, like the others, suffer from "short commons," or join
in the welcome meal of "hoe cake and sorghum," with difficulty
obtained from the half famished "company." The story is one for
young people; it is pleasantly told, and will be appreciated,
especially by those who are interested in good books for
children.

The "Log of Lady Gray" is a bright little record of the cruise
of a party in a cat-boat with enigmas, riddles, and other
verbal amusements to give variety.--_Public Opinion._

The book abounds in fun and frolic, and suggestions of a sweet
and happy daily life.--_The Evangelist._

The book is full of sprightly good things.--_Herald and
Presbyter._

------

BONNELL, SILVER & CO.,
PUBLISHERS,
24 West 22d Street, New York.



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