The Angel of the Tenement

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."

And Mrs. O'Malligan being as good as her word, and Mrs. Tony successfully interviewed, the good Irish lady returned home in triumph bearing a large bundle of cast-off garments, and at once summoned the Tenement to her apartments.

The first arrived ladies were already giving vent to their appreciation of the Tony generosity when Miss Carew and Miss Bonkowski arrived, Mary's bony face, in deference to the angelic prejudices now ruling her, red and smarting from an energetic application of the same soap as ministered to her room's needs, but beaming with a grim pride as she bore the radiant Angel, wild with delight at getting out of her narrow quarters.

Yielding to the popular voice, though not without reluctance, Mary placed her darling in Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and the process of exhibiting and trying on the garments began at once.

For a time her small ladyship yielded graciously, until seeing her pretty feet bared that the little stockings and half worn shoes might be fitted, she suddenly cast her eyes about the circle of ladies, and won by the pretty, dark beauty of young Mrs. Repetto, the Tenement's bride of a month's standing, imperiously demanded that lady to take the pink toes to market.

Overcome with having the public attention thus drawn upon her, pretty Mrs. Repetto in the best Italian-English she could muster, confessed her inability to either understand or comply, whereupon the baby, bearing no malice in her present high good-humor, proceeded to take them herself.

"This little pig went to market," the angelic accents declared, while her ladyship smiled sweetly upon Mrs. Repetto, and Mary Carew breathlessly motioned for silence with all the pride of a doting parent.

"This little pig stayed home-" the ladies on the outskirts pressed near that they too might hear.

"This little pig had bread and cheese," whereupon Mrs. Repetto recovering, went down on her knees to be nearer the scene of exploit.

"This little pig had none;" the interest now was breathless, and as the last little pig went squeaking home the ladies nearest fell upon the darling and covered her with kisses.

"An' it's jus' that smart she is, all the time," declared Mary Carew proudly, "an' 'taint like she's showin' off, either, is it, Norma?"

When at last the trying on was over, and the Tony generosity was sufficiently enlarged upon, the ladies, as is the way with the best of the sex, fell into a mild gossip before separating. And while racy bits of Tenement shortcomings were being handed around, the small object of this gathering, too young, alas, to know the joys denied her because of her limited abilities to understand the nature of the conversation, slipped down from Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and eluding Mary's absent hold, proceeded to journey about the room, until reaching the open door, she took her way, unobserved, out of the O'Malligan first floor front and leaving its glories of red plush furniture and lace curtains behind her, forthwith made her way out the hall door into the street.

The hot, garbage-strewn pavements and sunbaked gutters swarmed with the sons and daughters of the Tenement. Directly opposite its five-storied front was the rear entrance to the Fourth Regiment Armory. And there, at that moment, a sad-eyed, swarthy Italian,-swinging his hand-organ down on the asphalt pavement in front of the Armory's open doors, was beginning to grind out his melodies. And with the first note, children came running, from doorstep and curb, from sidewalk and gutter, while, at the same moment, in the open door of the Armory appeared a small, chubby-cheeked boy, who had upon his head a soldier cap so much too large for him as to cover the tips of his ears entirely, and who, moreover, wore, buckled about his waist, a belt gay as to trimmings and glittering with silver finishings. If the Fourth Regiment boasted a Company of Lilliputian Guards here surely was a member.

The Angel, in the Tenement door, was enchanted. How different a world from that upstairs room under the roof! She kept step to the music and nodded her head to the fascinating little boy in the Armory door. And the sharp eyes of that young gentleman had no sooner espied the nodding little creature in the doorway opposite, than heels together, head erect, up went a quick hand to the military cap. The Angel was being saluted, and while her ignorance of the fact prevented her appreciating that honor, the friendliness of the little boy was alluring. Down the steps she came, her little feet tripping to the measure of the music, her skirts outheld, and flitting across the pavement and over the curb, she made for the group of children in the street. Cobblestones, however, being strange to the baby feet, up those dancing members tripped and down the Angel fell, just as a wagon came dashing around the corner of the streets.

Out rushed the small boy from the Armory door, and, scattering the crowd around the organ, caught the fallen Angel by the arm, and raised his hand with an air of authority, as, with a grin, the driver on the wagon drew up his horse and surveyed the group, and the sad-eyed Italian, recognizing the superior attraction, shouldered his organ and moved on.

"Hello," cried the man on the wagon seeing the child was not hurt, "yer can soak me one if it ain't little Joe! Where'd yer git dem togs, kid? What'r' yer goin' in fer anyhow, baby perlice?"

The region in the neighborhood of Joey's waist swelled with pride, and his chubby face bore a look of wounded dignity. "There ain't no perlice about this yere, Bill, it's a sojer I be, see?"

Being pressed by Bill to explain himself, Joey unbent. "Yer see, Bill, Dad ain't never showed up fer to git me-seen anything of Dad since he got out, Bill?"

Bill nodded.

"What's he up to now?" queried Joey.

"Shovin' the queer," admitted Bill laconically, "nabbed right off an' in the cooler waitin' his turn, yer won't be troubled by him fer quite a spell, I'll give yer dat fer a pointer, see?"

Joey saw, and for the space of half a second seemed somewhat sobered by the intelligence. "I guessed as much," said he, "yer see, after he got nabbed first, mammy she-yer didn't know as mammy took an' died, did yer, Bill?" and Joey faltered and let the Angel take possession of his cap and transfer it to her own curly head while the Tenement children applauded with jeering commendation, seeing there was a standing feud between Joey and the rest of the juvenile populace over its possession.

"No," Bill allowed, he did not know it, but, seeing that she was always ailing, Bill was in no wise surprised.

"An'-an' since then, I'm stayin' over ter th' Arm'ry wid Old G. A. R. Yer know him, Bill, Old G. A. R. what takes care of th' Arm'ry. He was there afore yer left th' grocery."

Bill remembered the gentleman.

"I stays wid him an' he drills me an' makes me scrub, hully gee, how he do make me wash meself, Bill! An' there's one sojer-man, th' Cap'n, he give me these togs, he did, an' he tol' Old G. A. R. to lem'me eat along wid him over ter Dutchy's Res'traunt," nodding toward a cheap eating-house at the corner, "an' he'd stand fer it. They calls me major, all of 'em to th' Arm'ry, Bill, see?" and Joey was waxing voluble indeed, when he turned to see the mob of jeering children make off up the street, his cap in their midst, while the wailing Angel was being rescued from under the horse's very hoofs by Mary Carew.

Joey put his spirit of inquiry before even his cap. "Is she er Angel, say?" he inquired of Miss Carew, turning his back on Bill without ceremony who with a grin and a nod to the group of Tenement ladies at the door, drove off, "I heerd yer had er Angel over there, but I didn't know as it was straight, what they was givin' me, see?"

"That's what she is, the darling yonder," declared Miss Bonkowski from the curbstone, nodding airily, "you've got it straight this time, Joey. And if what Peter O'Malligan says about your picking her up just now is so, you're welcome to come over some time and play with her."

"Yes, it's true," supplemented Mary Carew, trying to pacify the struggling Angel in her arms who, gazing after the children, showed a decided inclination to descend to human level and mingle with them of earth, "it's true an' that's jus' what she is,-the Angel of this Tenement, an', as Norma says, you're free to come over and play with her, though there ain't many of you I'd say it to;" and with that the tall, gaunt Mary bearing the baby, followed Norma into the house and up the narrow, broken stairs, and along the dark halls past door after door closed upon its story of squalor and poverty, until, at last, panting with the child's weight, she reached their own abode under the roof.

"Which," as Mary had been wont, in the past, to observe, "was about as near Heaven as the poor need look to get." But now, for some reason, these bitter speeches were growing less frequent on Mary Carew's lips since she opened her door to entertain an Angel.