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."