"Here, pussy, pussy," she called. Then, as her call was answered, "My God! what did I tell ye? Tis the wan-eyed cat!"
III
The next morning the postman brought a letter. Mary was not surprised to get it. Casey had gone to look for the "gran' job," and the older children were in school, so the letter could not be read, but she could make out the signature, written in the large, unformed hand where-with Angela had covered every available space in the days of her brief but laborious apprenticeship to the art of writing.
With trembling hand Mary tucked the letter in her bosom, hastily got ready herself and Dewey and the baby, and started for Maggie's. Maggie was younger and had enjoyed more educational advantages. She could "r'ade printin'" easily, and "writin"' fairly well if it hadn't too many flourishes.
"She says," spelled out Mrs. O'Connor, "'Dear Ma, I'm at —— West Randolph Street I'm sick I'm afraid to go home count of Pa Your Loving daughter Angela Ann Casey.' I'll go wid ye," finished Mrs. O'Connor in the same breath.
Out of her small store of tawdry finery she lent several articles to make Mary "look more drissy," and while they got ready for their momentous journey, Mary related the events of the day before, and of Saturday night.
"Me an' Tim," said Maggie, when the tale had reached the stage of the "parlie" and Mary's earnings as a scrub-woman, "was figgerin' how we could help out a bit, ag'in' she come home, an' Tim have promised t' take me 'n' her to th' theayter quite frayquint of a Sat'day noight, an' together we're goin' t' give her half a dollar ivry wake t' spind on her clo'es."
The number they sought on West Randolph Street was not far from the fateful Haymarket Square. There was a store on the ground floor, with living rooms behind. And above, a long flight of oilcloth-covered stairs led to a "hotel."
They inquired first in the store, but no one there had ever heard of Angela Ann. Then, with fast-beating hearts, the women mounted to the office of the hotel, an inside room facing the head of the first flight of stairs. The door stood open, and they looked, before entering, into a gas-lighted room furnished with yellow-painted wooden arm-chairs ranged along the walls and flanked by a sparser row of cuspidors; a big sheet-iron stove on a square zinc plateau filled the middle of the room, and near the door, behind a small desk like a butcher-store cashier's, sat the "clerk," chewing vigorously and expectorating without accuracy.
"Yes, she has a room here," he answered to Mary's question, "hall room, rear, third floor."