The baby glancing over her shoulder, with the little frown of displeasure that always greeted such ignorance on Norma's part, had but one reply: "Tante," she would declare, and continue her measured walk about the floor. So, for pastime, Norma began teaching her the figures of a dance then on the boards at the Opera House, to which her little ladyship lent herself with readiness. The motions, sometimes approaching the grotesque in the lean and elderly chorus-lady as she bobbed about the limited space, courtesying, twirling, pirouetting, her blonde hair done up in kids,—herself in the abbreviated toilet of pink calico sack and petticoat reserved for home hours, changed to unconscious grace and innocent abandon in the light, clean-limbed child, who learned with quickness akin to instinct, and who seemed to follow Norma's movements almost before they were completed.
"It is wonderful—amazing!" Miss Bonkowski would exclaim, pausing for breath, "it is genius," and her voice would pause and fall reverently before the words, and the lesson would be resumed with greater enthusiasm than before.
But many were the days when, Norma away at rehearsal and Mary Carew, hot, tired, alas, even cross,—totally irresponsive to anything but the stitching of jean pantaloons,—the Angel would grow tired of the stuffy room and long for the forbidden dangers and delights of Tenement sidewalks. Then, often, with nothing else to do, she would catch up her tiny skirts and whirl herself into the dance Norma had taught her, in and out among the furniture crowding the room, humming little broken snatches of music for herself, bending, swaying, her bright eyes full of laughter as they met Mary's tired ones, her curls bobbing, until breathless, hot and weary she would drop on the floor and fall asleep, her head pillowed on her soft dimpled arm.
But on one of these long, hot mornings when the heat seemed to stream in as from a furnace at the window and even the flies buzzed languidly, the Angel was seized with another idea for passing time. Her vocabulary of Tenement vernacular was growing too, and she chattered unceasingly.
"C'rew, didn't a fink Angel might go find her mamma?" she demanded on this particular morning.
"To-morrow," said C'rew, and the click in her tired voice sounded even above the whirring of the heavy machine, for C'rew's head ached and her back ached, and possibly her heart ached too, for herself and Norma and the child and poor people in one-windowed tenement rooms in general.
"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.