The Angel of the Tenement | Page 4

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