Children of the Tenements | Page 6

another irresolutely.
None of them seemed to know what to say. It was the newcomer who
broke the silence again.
"Can't ye speak?" she said, in a voice in which anger and rising
apprehension were struggling. "Where's the boy? Kate, what is it?"
She had caught hold of the rail, as if in fear of falling. The woman
addressed said hesitatingly:--
"Did ye never hear, Mame? Ain't no one tole ye?"
"Tole me what?" cried the other, shrilly. "They tole me nothing. What's
wrong? Good God! 'tain't nothin' with the child?" She shook the other
in sudden anger. "Speak, Kate, can't you?"
"Will is dead," said Kate, slowly, thus urged. "It's nine weeks come
Sunday that he fell out o' the winder and was kilt. They buried him
from the Morgue. We thought you knowed."

Stunned by the blow, the woman had sunk upon the lowest step and
buried her face in her hands. She sat there with her shawl drawn over
her head, as one by one the neighbors went inside. One lingered; it was
the one they had called Kate.
"Mame," she said, when the last was gone, touching her on the
shoulder--"Mame!"
An almost imperceptible movement of the head under its shawl
testified that she heard.
"Mebbe it was for the best," said Kate, irresolutely; "he might have
took after--Tim--you know."
The shrouded figure sat immovable, Kate eyed it in silence, and went
her way.
The night wore on. The streets were deserted and the stores closed.
Only the saloon windows blazed with light. But the figure sat there yet.
It had not stirred. Then it rose, shook out the shawl, and displayed the
face of the convict woman who had sought refuge in Mrs. Kane's flat.
The face was dry-eyed and hard.
The policeman on the beat rang the bell of the Florence Mission at two
o'clock on Sunday morning, and waited until Mother Pringle had
unbolted the door. "One for you," he said briefly, and pointed toward
the bedraggled shape that crouched in the corner. It was his day off, and
he had no time to trouble with prisoners. The matron drew a corner of
the wet shawl aside and took one cold hand. She eyed it attentively;
there was a wedding ring upon it.
"Why, child," she said, "you'll catch your death of cold. Come right in.
Girls, give a hand."
Two of the women inmates half led, half carried her in, and the bolts
shut out Bleecker Street once more. They led her to the dormitory,
where they took off her dress and shawl, heavy with the cold rain. The
matron came bustling in; one of the girls spoke to her aside. She looked

sharply at the newcomer.
"Mamie Anderson!" she said. "Well, of all things! Where have you
been all this while? Yes, I know," she added soothingly, as the stranger
made a sign to speak. "Never mind; we'll talk about it to-morrow. Go to
sleep now and get over it."
But though bathed and fed and dosed with bromide,--bromide is a
standard prescription at the Florence Mission,--Mamie Anderson did
not get over it. Bruised and sore from many blows, broken in body and
spirit, she told the girls who sat by her bed through the night such
fragments of her story as she could remember. It began, the part of it
that took account of Bleecker Street, when her husband was sent to
State's Prison for robbery, and, to live, she took up with a scoundrel
from whom she kept the secret of her child. With such of her earnings
as she could steal from her tormentor she had paid little Willie's board
until she was arrested and sent to the Island.
What had happened in the three days since she escaped from the
hospital, where she had been detailed with the scrubbing squad, she
recalled only vaguely and with long lapses. They had been days and
nights of wild carousing. She had come to herself at last, lying beaten
and bound in a room in the house where her child was killed, so she
said. A neighbor had heard her groans, released her, and given her car
fare to go down town. So she had come and sat in the doorway of the
Mission to die.
How much of this story was the imagining of a disordered mind, the
police never found out.
Upon her body were marks as of ropes that had made dark bruises, but
at the inquest they were said to be of blows. Toward morning, when the
girls had lain down to snatch a moment's sleep, she called one of them,
whom she had known before, and asked for a drink of water. As she
took it with feeble hand, she asked:--
"Lil', can you pray?"

For an answer