The Angel of the Tenement | Page 3

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