The Angel of the Tenement | Page 6

while maybe

she'd have more to eat, she'd be enough worse off, a-starvin' for a
motherin' word!"
Miss Bonkowski, abashed at Mary's fierce attack, made an attempt to
speak, but Mary, vehemently interrupting, hurried on: "I know whereas
I speak, Norma Bonkowski, I know, I know. I've gone through it all
myself. I ain't never told you," and the knobby face burned a dull red, "I
was county poor, where I come from in the state, an' sent to th'
poor-house at four years old, myself, and I know, Norma, the miseries
whereas I speak of. And the Lord helpin' me," with grim solemnity,
"an' since He sent you here huntin' a room, an' since He helped me get
the machine, hard to run as it is, somehow I'm believin' more He's the
Lord of us poor folks too,--an' Him a-helpin' me to turn out one more
pair of pants a day, I'll never be the means of puttin' no child in a refuge
no-how an' no time. An' there it is, how I feel about it!"
Miss Bonkowski turned from a partial view of herself such as the
abbreviated glass to her bureau afforded. "Well," she said amiably,
"coming as I did from across the ocean as a child," and she nodded her
head in the supposed direction of the Atlantic, "and, until late years,
always enjoying a good home, what with father getting steady work as
a scene-painter, as I've told you often, and me going on in the chorus
off and on, and having my own bit of money, I don't really know about
the asylums in this country. But I have heard say they are so fine,
people ain't against deserting their children just to get 'em in such
places knowin' they'll be educated better'n they can do themselves."
Mary's pale eyes blazed. "Do you mean, Norma Bonkowski," she
demanded angrily, "that you'd rather she should go?"
Miss Bonkowski shrugged her shoulders somewhat haughtily. "How
you do talk, Mary! You know I don't,--but neither do I believe she is
any deserted child, and it's worrying me constant, what we ought to do.
Poor as I am, and what with father dying and the manager cutting my
salary as I get older,--I'll admit it to you, Mary, though I wouldn't have
him know I'm having another birthday to-day--" with a laugh and a
shrug, "why, as I say, I am pretty poor, but every cent I've got is yours
and the child's, and you know it, Mary Carew," and the good-hearted

chorus-lady, with a reproachful backward glance at her room-mate,
flounced out the door, leaving the re-assured Mary to sew, by the light
of an ill-smelling lamp, until her return from the theatre near midnight.
CHAPTER III.
INTRODUCES THE LITTLE MAJOR.
While the fine, embroidered dress in which the Angel had made her
appearance was all Mrs. O'Malligan had claimed it as to daintiness and
quality, after a few days' wear, its daintiness gave place to dirt, its
quality thinned to holes.
Upon this the Tenement was called into consultation. The Angel must
be clothed, but what, even from its cosmopolitan wardrobe, could the
house produce suitable for angelic wear? Many lands indeed were
represented by the inmates who now called its shelter home, but none
from that country where Angels are supposed to have their being.
"On my word," quoth Miss Bonkowski to the ladies gathered in the
room at her bidding, and Miss Norma gave an eloquent shrug and
elevated her blackened eyebrows as she spoke, "on my word I believe
her little heart would break if she had to stay in dirty, ragged clothes
very long. Such a darling for being washed and curled, such a precious
for always cleaning up! It makes me sure she must be different,"--Miss
Norma was airy but she was also humble, recognizing perhaps her own
inherent shrinking from too frequent an application of soap and
water--"she's something different, born and bred, from such as me!"
But at this the ladies murmured. Miss Bonkowski had been their pride,
their boast, nor did their allegiance falter now, even in the face of the
Angel's claims to superiority.
Miss Bonkowski was not ungrateful for this expression of loyalty,
which she acknowledged with a smile, as she tightened the buckle on
the very high-heeled and coquettish slipper she was rejuvenating, but
she protested, nevertheless, that all this did not alter the fact that the
Angel must be clothed.

"As fer th' dirt," said the energetic Mrs. O'Malligan, on whose ample
lap the Angel was at that moment sitting in smiling friendliness, "sure
an' I'll be afther washin' her handful uv clothes ivery wake, meself, an'
what with them dozens of dresses I'm doin' fer Mrs. Tony's childers all
th' time, it's surely a few she'd