stove and table together for washing, while
Mary Carew, avoiding the others' glances, busied herself by awkwardly
wiping the child's mouth and chin with a corner of her own faded cotton
dress.

Submitting as if the process was a matter of course, the baby gazed
meanwhile into Mary's colorless, bony and unlovely face. Perhaps the
childish eyes found something behind its hardness not visible to older
and less divining insight, for one soft hand forthwith stole up to the
hollow cheek, while the other pulled at the worn sleeve for attention.
"What a name?" the clear little voice lisped inquiringly.

Poor Mary looked embarrassed, but awkwardly lent herself to the caress
as if, in spite of her shamefacedness, she found it not unpleasant.

The baby's eyes regarded her with sad surprise. "A got no name,
poor--poor--a got no name," then she broke forth, and as if quite
overcome with the mournfulness of Mary's condition, the little head
burrowed back into the hollow of the supporting arm, that she might the
better gaze up and study the face of this object for pity and wonder.

Poor Mary Carew--would that some one of the hundreds of un-mothered and
unloved little ones in the great city had but found it out sooner--her
starved heart had been hungering all her life, and now her arms closed
about the child.

"I reckon I'll keep her till somebody comes for her," she said with a
kind of defiance, as if ashamed of her own weakness, "it'll only mean,"
with a grim touch of humor in her voice, "it'll only mean a few more
jean pantaloons a week to make any how."

"We'll share her keep between us alike, Mary Carew," declared Norma,
haughtily, with a real, not an affected toss, of the frizzed head now,
"what is your charge, is mine too, I'd have you know!"

"Sure, an' we'll all do a part for the name of the house," said Mrs.
O'Malligan, "an' be proud." And the other ladies agreeing to this more
or less warmly, the matter was considered as settled.

"An' as them as left her know where she is," said Mary Carew, the click
quite decided again in her tones, "if they want her, they know where to
come and get her--but--you hear to what I say, Norma, they'll never
come!"

CHAPTER II.

THE ENTERTAINERS OF THE ANGEL.

It was one thing for the good ladies of the Tenement to settle the
matter thus, but another entirely for the high-spirited, passionate
little stranger,--bearing every mark of refined birth and good breeding
in her f