Mary's pale eyes blazed. "Do you mean, Norma Bonkowski," she demanded angrily, "that you'd rather she should go?"
Miss Bonkowski shrugged her shoulders somewhat haughtily. "How you do talk, Mary! You know I don't,—but neither do I believe she is any deserted child, and it's worrying me constant, what we ought to do. Poor as I am, and what with father dying and the manager cutting my salary as I get older,—I'll admit it to you, Mary, though I wouldn't have him know I'm having another birthday to-day—" with a laugh and a shrug, "why, as I say, I am pretty poor, but every cent I've got is yours and the child's, and you know it, Mary Carew," and the good-hearted chorus-lady, with a reproachful backward glance at her room-mate, flounced out the door, leaving the re-assured Mary to sew, by the light of an ill-smelling lamp, until her return from the theatre near midnight.
CHAPTER III.
INTRODUCES THE LITTLE MAJOR.
While the fine, embroidered dress in which the Angel had made her appearance was all Mrs. O'Malligan had claimed it as to daintiness and quality, after a few days' wear, its daintiness gave place to dirt, its quality thinned to holes.
Upon this the Tenement was called into consultation. The Angel must be clothed, but what, even from its cosmopolitan wardrobe, could the house produce suitable for angelic wear? Many lands indeed were represented by the inmates who now called its shelter home, but none from that country where Angels are supposed to have their being.
"On my word," quoth Miss Bonkowski to the ladies gathered in the room at her bidding, and Miss Norma gave an eloquent shrug and elevated her blackened eyebrows as she spoke, "on my word I believe her little heart would break if she had to stay in dirty, ragged clothes very long. Such a darling for being washed and curled, such a precious for always cleaning up! It makes me sure she must be different,"—Miss Norma was airy but she was also humble, recognizing perhaps her own inherent shrinking from too frequent an application of soap and water—"she's something different, born and bred, from such as me!"
But at this the ladies murmured. Miss Bonkowski had been their pride, their boast, nor did their allegiance falter now, even in the face of the Angel's claims to superiority.
Miss Bonkowski was not ungrateful for this expression of loyalty, which she acknowledged with a smile, as she tightened the buckle on the very high-heeled and coquettish slipper she was rejuvenating, but she protested, nevertheless, that all this did not alter the fact that the Angel must be clothed.
"As fer th' dirt," said the energetic Mrs. O'Malligan, on whose ample lap the Angel was at that moment sitting in smiling friendliness, "sure an' I'll be afther washin' her handful uv clothes ivery wake, meself, an' what with them dozens of dresses I'm doin' fer Mrs. Tony's childers all th' time, it's surely a few she'd be a-givin' me, whin I tell her about th' darlint, an' me a niver askin' fer nothin' at all, along of all mine bein' boys. Sure an' I'll be a-beggin' her this very day, I will, whin I carry me washin' home."