With the aid of Casey, who was a "scollard," and could "r'ade 'n' write joost as aisy," she pored over the sensational papers in search of stories about girls in trouble, and never a horror happened to an unidentified girl anywhere but Mary was sure it was Angela Ann.
Once there was an account of an unknown young woman found dead on the prairies near Dunning, the county institution. It was Johnnie who laboriously spelled out this story for her—Casey having gone to that club of congenial spirits, O'Shaughannessy's saloon—and at ten o'clock, when the children were all abed, her anxieties could brook no more delay. Throwing a shawl about her head and shoulders, she stole along the pitchy passageway, up the long flight of steps to the sidewalk, clutching the torn fragment of newspaper in the hand that held the shawl together beneath her chin.
It was Saturday night, and the avenue was still brightly lighted. One or two acquaintances greeted her, but she hurried by with only a nod and a word. At Harrison and Halsted and Blue Island Avenue, where three streams of ceaseless activity converge, there is always a whirlpool rapids of traffic and humanity, and here, in a brilliant drug store, Mary felt far enough from her own haunts and all who knew her and Angela Ann to venture on her errand.
"I want t' tillyphome," she whispered to the clerk, who pointed impatiently to the booth.
"I dunno how," said Mary imploringly. "I want ye t' do it fer me. R'ade that." She thrust the dirty, crumpled fragment of the evening's yellow journal into his hand.
The young man glanced at it, and then curiously at her. "I've read it," he said.
"Down here, somewheers," said Mary, pointing vaguely towards the last paragraph, "it till wheer she be, an' I want ye t' tillyphome that place an' ask thim have she a laarge brown mole on her lift side. If she have, I'm goin' out theer this night, fer 'tis my gyurl I t'ink she be."
This was not as startling an episode to the young man addressed as it might have been to one in a quieter locality. Nevertheless, it smacked of the dramatic sufficiently to interest him, and when Mary proffered her nickel he called up the Dunning morgue.
After what seemed an interminable wait, while the sleepy morgue attendant at the county poor-house was being summoned by repeated rings, and the brief colloquy was in progress, the clerk emerged from the booth.
"The girl has been identified this evening," he said.