The old woman nodded her head.
“I know,” she said, “I know. We was livin’ over by the Alley. But they didn’t stay. My old man he died an’ we broke up. Sure, an’ I’m nothin’ but a wanderer on the face of the airth iver since, an’ I’m grown old before my time, I am.”
“But, Mrs. Whalen, just think—just remember,” urged Margaret. “Where did they go? Surely you can tell that.”
Again Mrs. Whalen shook her head.
“Mike died, an’ Tom an’ Mary, they got married, an’ Jamie, sure an’ he got his leg broke an’ they tuk him ter the horspital—bad cess to ’em! An’ ’twas all that upsettin’ that I didn’t know nothin’ what did happen. I seen ’em—then I didn’t seen ’em; an’ that’s all thar was to it. An’ it’s the truth I’m a-tellin’ yez.”
It was with heavy hearts that Margaret and Patty left the little attic room half an hour later. They had no clew now upon which to work, and the accomplishment of their purpose seemed almost impossible.
In the little attic room behind them, however, they left nothing but rejoicing. Margaret’s gifts had been liberal, and her promises for the future even more than that. The little bent old woman could look straight ahead now to days when there would be no bare cupboards and empty coal scuttles to fill her soul with apprehension, and her body with discomfort.
Back to the hotel went Margaret and Patty for a much-needed night’s rest, hoping that daylight and the morning sun would urge them to new efforts, and give them fresh courage, in spite of the unpromising outlook. Nor were their hopes unfulfilled. The morning sun did bring fresh courage; and, determined to make a fresh start, they turned their steps to the Alley.
The Alley never forgot that visit, nor the days that immediately followed it. There were men and women who remembered Mag of the Alley and Patty Murphy; but there were more who did not. There were none, however, that did not know who they were before the week was out, and that had not heard the story of Margaret’s own childhood’s experience in that same Alley years before.
As for the Alley—it did not know itself. It had heard, to be sure, of Christmas. It had even experienced it, in a way, with tickets for a Salvation Army tree or dinner. But all this occurred in the winter when it was cold and snowy; and it was spring now. It was not Christmas, of course; and yet—