e 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'