The Angel of the Tenement | Page 2

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