with a heart strangely light. "And I couldn't slight the corners if I wanted to," she told her neighbors, "with them great solemn eyes a-watchin' an' a-follerin' me."

It was on a morning following one of these general upheavals and straightenings that the three sat down to breakfast, the two ladies feeling unwontedly virtuous and elegant by reason of their clean surroundings. The Angel seeming brighter and more willing to leave Mary's side, Norma put her into one of their two chairs, and herself sat on the bed. But no sooner had the baby grabbed her cracked mug than her smooth forehead began to pucker, and, setting it down again, she regarded Norma earnestly. "Didn't a ought to say something?" she demanded, and her eyes grew dark with puzzled questioning.

"And what should you say, darling?" returned Norma, leaning over to crumble some bread into the milk which a little judicious pinching in other directions made possible for the child.

The baby studied her bread and milk intently. "Jesus"—she lisped, then hesitated, and her worried eyes sought Norma's again,—"Jésus"—then with a sudden joyful burst of inspiration, "Amen," she cried and seized her mug triumphantly.

"It's a blessing she is asking," said Norma with tears in her eyes, "I know, for I've seen it done on the stage, though what with the food being pasteboard cakes and colored plaster fruit, I never took much stock in it before," and she laughed somewhat unsteadily.

"Bread and butter, come to supper," sang the baby with sudden glee, "that what Tante says.—Where Angel's Tante?" and with the recollection her face changed, and the pretty pointed chin began to quiver. A moment of indecision, and she slipped down from her chair. "Kiss Angel bye," she commanded, tugging at Mary's skirts, "her goin' to Tante," the little face fierce with determination, every curl bobbing with the emphatic nods of the little head, "kiss her bye, C'rew," and the wild sobs began again.

So passed a week, but, for all the added care and responsibility, the longer this wayward, imperious little creature, with the hundred moods for every hour, was hers, the less was Mary Carew disposed to consider the possibility of any one coming to claim her. Not so with the blonde-tressed chorus lady, who combined more of worldly wisdom with her no less kindly heart. Patiently she tried to win the child's further confidence, to stimulate the baby memory, to unravel the lisped statements. But it was in vain. Smiles indeed, she won at length, through tears, and little sad returns to her playful sallies, but the little one's words were too few, her ideas too confused, for Norma to learn anything definite from her lispings.

But Norma was not satisfied. "My heart misgives me," she murmured in the tragic accents she so loved to assume,—one evening as she pinned on her cheap and showy lace hat and adjusted its wealth of flowers, preparatory to starting to the Garden Opera House, "my heart misgives me. It seems to me it is our duty, Mary, to do something about this,—to report it—somehow,—somewhere"—she ended vaguely. "Hadn't I better speak to a policeman after all?"

Mary Carew drew the child,—drowsing in her arms,—to her quickly. "No," she said, and her thin, bony face looked almost fierce, "no, for if you did and they couldn't find her people, which you know as well as I do they couldn't, do you s'pose they'd give her back to us? They'd put her in a refuge or 'sylum, that's what they'd do, where, while maybe she'd have more to eat, she'd be enough worse off, a-starvin' for a motherin' word!"

Miss Bonkowski, abashed at Mary's fierce attack, made an attempt to speak, but Mary, vehemently interrupting, hurried on: "I know whereas I speak, Norma Bonkowski, I know, I know. I've gone through it all myself. I ain't never told you," and the knobby face burned a dull red, "I was county poor, where I come from in the state, an' sent to th' poor-house at four years old, myself, and I know, Norma, the miseries whereas I speak of. And the Lord helpin' me," with grim solemnity, "an' since He sent you here huntin' a room, an' since He helped me get the machine, hard to run as it is, somehow I'm believin' more He's the Lord of us poor folks too,—an' Him a-helpin' me to turn out one more pair of pants a day, I'll never be the means of puttin' no child in a refuge no-how an' no time. An' there it is, how I feel about it!"

Miss Bonkowski turned from a partial view of herself such as the abbreviated glass to her bureau afforded. "Well," she said amiably, "coming as I did from across the ocean as a child," and she nodded her head in the supposed direction of the Atlantic, "and, until late years, always enjoying a good home, what with father getting steady work as a scene-painter, as I've told you often, and me going on in the chorus off and on, and having my own bit of money, I don't really know about the asylums in this country. But I have heard say they are so fine, people ain't against deserting their children just to get 'em in such places knowin' they'll be educated better'n they can do themselves."

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