"Yes, yes," murmured Miss Bonkowski apologetically, "Angel is three years old, of course, a great, big girl."
"A gwate, big girl," repeated the baby, nodding her pretty head approvingly, "that what Yosie say," then with abrupt change of tone, "where her breakfast, her wants her milk!"
"An' she shall have it, sure," cried Mrs. O'Malligan promptly, and retired out the door with heavy haste, while Miss Bonkowski hospitably turned to bring forth what the apartment could boast in the way of breakfast.
Meanwhile the other ladies withdrew to the one window of the small room to discuss the situation.
"That's it, I'm sure," one was saying, while she twisted up her back hair afresh, "for my man, he says he saw a woman pass our door yesterday afternoon, kinder late, an' go on up steps with a young 'un in her arms. He never seen her come back, he says, but Mis' Tomlin here, she says, she seen a woman dressed nice, come down afterwards seemin' in a hurry, but she didn't have no child, didn't you say, Mis' Tomlin?"
Thus appealed to, timid little Mrs. Tomlin shifted her wan-faced, fretting baby from one arm to the other and asserted the statement to be quite true.
"An'ther case of desartion," pronounced Mrs. O'Malligan, having returned meanwhile with a cup filled with a thin blue liquid known to the Tenement as milk, "a plain case of desartion, an' whut's to be done about it, I niver can say!"
"Done!" cried Miss Bonkowski, on her knees before Mary and the child, crumbling some bread into the milk, "and what are the police for but just such cases?"
The other ladies glanced apprehensively at Mrs. O'Malligan, that lady's bitter hatred of these guardians of the public welfare being well known, since that day when three small O'Malligans were taken in the act of relieving a passing Italian gentleman of a part of his stock of bananas. Mrs. O'Malligan had paid their fines in the City Court, had thrashed them around as many times as her hot Irish temper had rekindled at the memory, but had never forgiven the police for the disgrace to the family of O'Malligan. And being the well-to-do personage of The Tenement, it should be remarked that Mrs. O'Malligan's sentiments were generally deferred to, if not always echoed by her neighbors.