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 brightness. Then Norma got up and began to clear away the remains of breakfast and to clatter the crockery from stove and table together for washing, while Mary Carew, avoiding the others' glances, busied herself by awkwardly wiping the child's mouth and chin with a corner of her own faded cotton dress.
Submitting as if the process was a matter of course, the baby gazed meanwhile into Mary's colorless, bony and unlovely face. Perhaps the childish eyes found something behind its hardness not visible to older and less divining insight, for one soft hand forthwith stole up to the hollow cheek, while the other pulled at the worn sleeve for attention. "What a name?" the clear little voice lisped inquiringly.
Poor Mary looked embarrassed, but awkwardly lent herself to the caress as if, in spite of her shamefacedness, she found it not unpleasant.
The baby's eyes regarded her with sad surprise. "A got no name, poor-poor-a got no name," then she broke forth, and as if quite overcome with the mournfulness of Mary's condition, the little head burrowed back into the hollow of the supporting arm, that she might the better gaze up and study the face of this object for pity and wonder.
Poor Mary Carew-would that some one of the hundreds of un-mothered and unloved little ones in the great city had but found it out sooner-her starved heart had been hungering all her life, and now her arms closed about the child.
"I reckon I'll keep her till somebody comes for her," she said with a kind of defiance, as if ashamed of her own weakness, "it'll only mean," with a grim touch of humor in her voice, "it'll only mean a few more jean pantaloons a week to make any how."
"We'll share her keep between us alike, Mary Carew," declared Norma, haughtily, with a real, not an affected toss, of the frizzed head now, "what is your charge, is mine too, I'd have you know!"
"Sure, an' we'll all do a part for the name of the house," said Mrs. O'Malligan, "an' be proud." And the other ladies agreeing to this more or less warmly, the matter was considered as settled.
"An' as them as left her know where she is," said Mary Carew, the click quite decided again in her tones, "if they want her, they know where to come and get her-but-you hear to what I say, Norma, they'll never come!"
CHAPTER II. THE ENTERTAINERS OF THE ANGEL.
It was one thing for the good ladies of the Tenement to settle the matter thus, but another entirely for the high-spirited, passionate little stranger,-bearing every mark of refined birth and good breeding in her finely-marked features, her straight, slim white body, her slender hands and feet, her dainty ways and fearless bearing,-to adapt herself to the situation. The first excitement over, her terror and fright returned, and the cry went up unceasingly in lisping English interspersed with words utterly unintelligible to the two distracted ladies, begging to be taken to that mother of whom Mary Carew entertained so poor an opinion.
It was in vain that good woman, with a tenderness and patience quite at variance with her harsh tones, rocked, petted, coaxed and tried to satisfy with vague promises of "to-morrow." In vain did Norma, no less earnestly now that the touch of romance had faded into grim responsibility, whistle and sing and snap her fingers, the terror was too real, the sense of loss too poignant, the baby heart refused to be comforted, and it was only when exhaustion came that the child would moan herself to sleep in Mary's arms.
So passed several days, the baby drooping and pining, but clinging to Mary through it all, with a persistency which, while it won her heart entirely, sadly interfered with the progress of jean pantaloons.