It was when the three teachers, with 'Tildy's help, had at last distributed the sixty hats, hoods, and caps, and started the loitering groups on their homeward ways, that pretty Miss Stannard, putting on her own hat, addressed her new pupils. "Now, Major, I am ready," she said, and the three accordingly turned their steps toward the neighborhood of the Tenement.
Miss Ruth's small escort had quite an idea of the proper thing to do, and pointed out the landmarks as the three went along, the Angel's friendly hand slipped confidingly into that of her new friend.
"I did hear as so many died in this yere house of the fevers this summer," Joey remarked cheerfully, pointing to a wretched-looking tenement building they were passing; "they'll give yer a room there now fer nothin' to git a good name fer the house agin."
Miss Ruth shivered as they passed.
The Major next nodded toward a dingy saloon. "Here's where I take a schooner an' a free lunch sometimes," he remarked confidentially.
The tall young lady's brown eyes danced as she glanced down at the small person of the Major. "And how old are you, Major?" she inquired.
"Ha'f pas' seven, the Cap'n an' Old G. A. R., they say."
"The Captain? Old G. A. R.?"
"Uh, huh! The Cap'n's a good 'un, he is. He gim' me these yere togs, he did, an' he told Old G. A. R. I might sleep to th' Arm'ry, see?"
Miss Ruth saw, and was just about to pursue the subject of Old G. A. R., when the Angel dropped her hand and with a gleeful cry ran ahead, and Miss Stannard looked up to behold two females bearing down upon them. Miss Bonkowski and Mrs. O'Malligan in fact, nor did they pause in their haste, until the Angel was safe in Norma's embrace and the Major anything but safe, in the clutches of the irate Irish lady.
"An' it's yerself, ye limb, an' plaze to tell us whut ye mane by it?" the loud-voiced Mrs. O'Malligan demanded, "a-runnin' off with the childer agin, an' the whole Tiniment out huntin' an' her niver to be found at all, at all?"
But the sweet-faced, tall young lady coming to his rescue, the two women softened, and reaching the Tenement, insisted on Miss Stannard coming in, and hearing the Angel's story.
And on the way up to Miss Bonkowski's apartment, she learned that the Tenement, that morning, had been convulsed from cellar to garret, by the great honor bestowed upon it. For who but the Prima Donna, the Great Personage of Norma's professional world, had just driven away in her carriage after a visit of an hour and the Angel never to be found at all!
"An' ma'am," explained Mary Carew, her bony face swollen with crying, when Miss Stannard had been installed in one of the two chairs of the apartment, "an' ma'am, it was fer th' Angel she come. A offerin' Norma an' me anything we'd name to give her up, such a fancy as she's taken to her, an' wantin' her fer her own."
"And you, what did you say?" asked Miss Ruth, gently, watching Mary with tender eyes as she held the beautiful, chattering little creature so jealously in her arms, and thinking as she watched, of the life and reputation commonly accorded the great singer.
"Say?" came from Miss Bonkowski quickly, her befrizzled blonde tresses fairly a-tremble with her intensity, and sticking the hat-pin recklessly in and out of the lace hat she had taken off, "what did we say, you ask, and knowing, as you and every body must, the kind of life and future it would mean for a child that takes to things like this 'n does! With all her money and her soft, winning ways, it is better, far better, for the child with her disposition, to starve along with Mary an' me, than grow up to that, if it was nothing more to be afraid of than being left to servants and hotel people and dragged around from place to place in such a life as it is. Not that I mean, ma'am," and Miss Bonkowski spoke with quick pride, "that being in the profession need to make any body what they shouldn't be, for I know plenty of 'em of the best, and am one myself, though only a Chorus, but what with what's said about this one, even with her good heart and generous ways, she's not the one to have our Angel, though she meant it for the best."
"An' she said," Mary Carew took it up, "as how Norma's gettin' old, and 'll be dropped afore long from the Chorus, an' she offered her, she did, in this very room, a' here before me, to buy out a Costumer as is leavin' the business, an' start Norma in for herself, along of her knowin' how to run a business such as that."
"And oh girls," declared Miss Stannard as she told this part of the story to her assistant teachers afterward, "it was the bravest thing I've met among the poor people yet. Think of the courage of those two women, with poverty grimmer than they have yet known, ahead of them in all probability, yet determined to resist the temptation because they are assured it is not well for the child. Picture making jean pantaloons, year in, year out, at barely living wages, yet having the courage to put the matter so resolutely aside. After that, I could not bring myself to tell them they had done wrong in the beginning in not notifying the authorities. Of course there is some mystery about it. I cannot for a moment accept their explanation of it. The child, beyond question, is well born and has been carefully trained. And she goes about among all the strange, queer inmates of that Tenement house as fearlessly as a little queen. But, oh, the one that is a chorus-singer! If you could see her! So lean, so sallow, so airy and full of manner. But I will never laugh at another elderly chorus-singer again in my life, she is grand, she's heroic," and the pretty Kindergartner threaded gay worsteds into needles with a vigor which lent emphasis to her words.
"She's powerful stuck up, too," asserted the gloomy tones of 'Tildy Peggins, and she shook her mournful head, as she moved about straightening the disordered room for the next day, "there's a man lives in our Tenement wanted to keep comp'ny with her, but, la, she tossed her yellow head at his waffle cart, she did, an' she said if he'd had a settled h'occupation she might a thought about it in time, but she couldn't bring herself to consider a perambulating business, an' that was all there was to it. La, maybe she is grand an' 'eroic, but she's got a 'aughty 'eart, too, that woman has!"
CHAPTER VII. MISS RUTH MAKES THE ACQUAINTANCE OF OLD G. A. R.
The Angel, as the cooler weather came on, being suitably clothed by Miss Stannard and the invisible though still generous Mrs. Tony, and the good ladies of the Tenement seeing that she was properly fed, her little ladyship continued to thrive, and to pursue her way, sweet and innocent, in the midst of squalor, poverty and wickedness such as Mary and Norma could not always hide, even from her baby eyes.
True to the promise these ladies had made, she appeared regularly at Kindergarten in the charge of her faithful squire, the Major, whose own interest in the daily work had never flagged since the day he first agreed to help Miss Stannard.
It was with surprise, therefore, that, late in November, Miss Ruth noted the absence of the two for several successive days.
"Childern's obliged to get wore out fiddlin' with beads an' paper an' such, in time," said the perverse and unconverted 'Tildy Peggins. "That's the reason they's constant droppin' off, an' new ones comin' in. There ain't enough willainy in Kindergarten to keep their minds h'occupied. They's pinin' for the streets long afore you'd h'ever believe it,-their 'earts ain't satisfied with beads and paper, childern's obliged to have a little willainy mixed in."
But despite 'Tildy's pessimistic views, on the fifth morning of their absence, Miss Ruth had just determined to send around to the Tenement, when a knock summoned her to the door.
Outside stood the smiling Angel, in her little winter cloak and hood, her hand in that of a very large, very grizzled, and very military-looking man, who greeted Miss Stannard with a salute reminding her at once of Joey.