"Didn't a fink she might go play with little Joey?"
"No," said Mary decidedly, and she leaned back wearily and pushed her thin, colorless hair off her hot, throbbing temples, "no, you played down on the pavement with Joey an' th' rest yesterday, an the sun made you sick. But," with haste to avert the cloud lowering over the baby face, "if you'll be real good an' not worry her, you can go down an' see Mrs. O'Malligan."
Fair weather prevailed again on the pretty face, and at Mary's word the Angel was at the open door, tugging at the chair placed crossways to keep her from venturing out unobserved, and with a sigh and a guilty look at the pile of unfinished work, Mary rose and carried her down to the good Irish lady's door, and, with a word, hurried back.
Mrs. O'Malligan, big, beaming and red, smiled a moist but hearty welcome from over her tubs toward the little figure in the faded gingham standing shyly in the open doorway. "An' it's proud to see ye I am, me Angel," she declared, "though there's never a childer in call to be playin' wid ye."
But the Angel, nothing daunted, smiled back in turn, and climbed into a chair, and the two forthwith fell into friendly conversation, though it is doubtful if either understood one-half of what the other was talking about.
Presently Mrs. O'Malligan, with many apologies, went out into the back court to hang out the last of the family wash, and on her return, stopping short in the doorway, her jolly red face spread into a responsive smile. "The saints presarve us," she cried, "would ye look at the child?" for in the tub of blue rinsing water sat the gleeful Angel, water trickling from her yellow hair and from every stitch of clothing, while her evident enjoyment of the cool situation found a response in Mrs. O'Malligan's kind and indulgent heart.
"Angel take a baf," was the smiling though superfluous explanation which came from the infant Undine.
"An' it's right ye are," laughed Mrs. O'Malligan, "an' sure I'll be afther givin' ye a rale wan meself," and filling an empty tub with clean water, the brisk lady soon had the baby stripped to her firm, white skin and standing in the tub.
And what with the splashings of the naughty feet, and the wicked tumbles into the soap-suds every time the mischievous little body was rinsed, and Mrs. O'Malligan's "Whist, be aisy," and "It's a tormentin' darlint ye are," they heard nothing of the knocks at the door or the calls, nor knew that Miss Bonkowski, in street dress and hat, had entered, until she stood beside them with an armful of clean clothes.
"Was there ever such luck," she cried excitedly, "to find her all washed and just ready! Mary said she was here, and so I just brought her clean clothes down with me to save a trip back upstairs. Wipe her quickly, please," and with hands and tongue going, Miss Norma explained that one of the children in the juvenile dance on the boards at The Garden Opera House had been suddenly taken ill, and a matinée advertised for the next day.
"And it happens lucky enough," she went on, addressing the ladies who, catching wind of the excitement, had speedily gathered about the doorway, "it just happens I have been teaching her this very dance, and if she don't get frightened, I believe she will be able to take the place."
So saying, Miss Bonkowski gave a pull out and a last finishing pat to the strings of the embroidered muslin bonnet the child had worn on her first appearance, and taking her, clean, dainty, smiling and expectant, into her arms, Miss Norma plunged out of the comparative coolness of the Tenement hallway into the glare of the August sun.
But all this while the little brain was at work. "Goin' to Angel's mamma,-her goin' to her mamma," suddenly the child broke forth as Norma hurried along the hot streets, and the little hand beat a gleeful tattoo as it rested on Norma's shoulder.
Norma paused on the crowded sidewalk, to take breath beneath the shade of a friendly awning. "Not to-day, my angel," she panted, "to-day your Norma is going to take her precious where there are ever so many nice little girls for her to dance with."
"Angel likes to dance with little girls, Norma," admitted the baby, while Norma made ready to thread her way across the street through the press of vehicles.
"I'll not say one word to her about being frightened," reflected the wise chorus lady, "and she's such an eager little darling, thinking of other things and trying to do her best, maybe she won't think of it. If she can only keep the place while that child is sick,-what a help the money would be!"-and the usually hopeful Norma sighed as she hurried in the side entrance of the handsome stone building known to the public as The Garden Opera House.
* * * * *
The next afternoon, at The Garden Opera House, as the bell rang for the curtain to rise, Mary Carew, in best attire of worn black dress and cheap straw hat, was putting the Angel into the absent fairy's cast-off shell, which consisted of much white tarlatan as to skirts and much silver tinsel as to waist, with a pair of wonderful gauzy wings at sight of which the Angel was enraptured.
Miss Bonkowski being, as she expressed it, "on in the first scene," Mary Carew had been obliged to forsake jean pantaloons for the time being and come to take charge of the child, who in her earnest, quick, enthusiastic little fashion had done her part and gone through the rehearsal better even than the sanguine Norma had hoped, and after considerable drilling had satisfied the authorities that she could fill the vacancy.
As for the Angel, in her friendly fashion she had enjoyed herself hugely, accepting the homage of the other children like a small queen, graciously permitting herself to be enthused over by the various ladies who, like Norma, constituted "the chorus," and carrying home numerous offerings, from an indigestible wad of candy known as "an all-day-sucker," given her by her fairy-partner, to a silver quarter given her by the blonde and handsome tenor.
"She is the most fascinating little creature I ever met in my life," the prima donna had cried to the excited Miss Bonkowski, who had never been addressed by that great personage before,-"did you ever see such heavenly eyes,-not blue-violet-and such a smile-like the sun through tears! Who is she,-where did she come from? Such grace,-such poise!"
The Angel's story was recited to quite an audience, in Miss Bonkowski's most dramatic manner. But long before the chorus lady had finished, the great singer, lending but a wandering attention after the few facts were gathered, had coaxed the child into her silken lap, and with the mother touch which lies in every real woman's fingers from doll-baby days upward, was fondling and re-touching the rings of shining hair, and, with the mother-notes which a child within one's arms brings into every womanly woman's voice, was cooing broken endearments into the little ear.
Meanwhile the Angel gazed into the beautiful face with the calm and critical eyes of childhood. But what she saw there must have satisfied, for, with a sigh of content, she finally settled back against the encircling arm. "Pretty lady," was her candid comment. "Angel loves her."
Flattered and praised as she had been, it is doubtful if the great singer had ever received a tribute to her charms that pleased her more. "Bring her to my room to-morrow to dress her," she said to Miss Bonkowski in soft, winning tones that were nevertheless a command, unpinning the two long-stemmed roses she wore and putting them in the baby fingers, "and bring her early, mind!" And so it was that Mary Carew, nervous and awkward, was there now, doing her best to dress the excited little creature, whom nothing could keep still a second at a time.
"Thank you, ma'am," Mary managed to breathe as the great personage, turning the full radiance of her beauty upon the bewildered seamstress, took the necklace of flashing jewels from her maid's fingers and bade her help Mary.