The Angel of the Tenement | Page 8

her little feet tripping to the measure of the
music, her skirts outheld, and flitting across the pavement and over the
curb, she made for the group of children in the street. Cobblestones,
however, being strange to the baby feet, up those dancing members
tripped and down the Angel fell, just as a wagon came dashing around
the corner of the streets.
Out rushed the small boy from the Armory door, and, scattering the
crowd around the organ, caught the fallen Angel by the arm, and raised
his hand with an air of authority, as, with a grin, the driver on the
wagon drew up his horse and surveyed the group, and the sad-eyed
Italian, recognizing the superior attraction, shouldered his organ and
moved on.
"Hello," cried the man on the wagon seeing the child was not hurt, "yer
can soak me one if it ain't little Joe! Where'd yer git dem togs, kid?
What'r' yer goin' in fer anyhow, baby perlice?"
The region in the neighborhood of Joey's waist swelled with pride, and
his chubby face bore a look of wounded dignity. "There ain't no perlice
about this yere, Bill, it's a sojer I be, see?"
Being pressed by Bill to explain himself, Joey unbent. "Yer see, Bill,
Dad ain't never showed up fer to git me--seen anything of Dad since he

got out, Bill?"
Bill nodded.
"What's he up to now?" queried Joey.
"Shovin' the queer," admitted Bill laconically, "nabbed right off an' in
the cooler waitin' his turn, yer won't be troubled by him fer quite a spell,
I'll give yer dat fer a pointer, see?"
Joey saw, and for the space of half a second seemed somewhat sobered
by the intelligence. "I guessed as much," said he, "yer see, after he got
nabbed first, mammy she--yer didn't know as mammy took an' died, did
yer, Bill?" and Joey faltered and let the Angel take possession of his
cap and transfer it to her own curly head while the Tenement children
applauded with jeering commendation, seeing there was a standing
feud between Joey and the rest of the juvenile populace over its
possession.
"No," Bill allowed, he did not know it, but, seeing that she was always
ailing, Bill was in no wise surprised.
"An'--an' since then, I'm stayin' over ter th' Arm'ry wid Old G. A. R.
Yer know him, Bill, Old G. A. R. what takes care of th' Arm'ry. He was
there afore yer left th' grocery."
Bill remembered the gentleman.
"I stays wid him an' he drills me an' makes me scrub, hully gee, how he
do make me wash meself, Bill! An' there's one sojer-man, th' Cap'n, he
give me these togs, he did, an' he tol' Old G. A. R. to lem'me eat along
wid him over ter Dutchy's Res'traunt," nodding toward a cheap
eating-house at the corner, "an' he'd stand fer it. They calls me major,
all of 'em to th' Arm'ry, Bill, see?" and Joey was waxing voluble indeed,
when he turned to see the mob of jeering children make off up the
street, his cap in their midst, while the wailing Angel was being rescued
from under the horse's very hoofs by Mary Carew.

Joey put his spirit of inquiry before even his cap. "Is she er Angel,
say?" he inquired of Miss Carew, turning his back on Bill without
ceremony who with a grin and a nod to the group of Tenement ladies at
the door, drove off, "I heerd yer had er Angel over there, but I didn't
know as it was straight, what they was givin' me, see?"
"That's what she is, the darling yonder," declared Miss Bonkowski
from the curbstone, nodding airily, "you've got it straight this time,
Joey. And if what Peter O'Malligan says about your picking her up just
now is so, you're welcome to come over some time and play with her."
"Yes, it's true," supplemented Mary Carew, trying to pacify the
struggling Angel in her arms who, gazing after the children, showed a
decided inclination to descend to human level and mingle with them of
earth, "it's true an' that's jus' what she is,--the Angel of this Tenement,
an', as Norma says, you're free to come over and play with her, though
there ain't many of you I'd say it to;" and with that the tall, gaunt Mary
bearing the baby, followed Norma into the house and up the narrow,
broken stairs, and along the dark halls past door after door closed upon
its story of squalor and poverty, until, at last, panting with the child's
weight, she reached their own abode under the roof.
"Which," as Mary had been wont, in the past, to observe, "was about as
near Heaven as the poor need look to get." But now, for some