The Angel of the Tenement | Page 4

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