sent their husbands home for a summer
vacation, with, unfortunately, no provision for wages, a state of
affairs forbidding even angels' visits, when the angel possessed so
human a craving for bread.

Even Mrs. O'Malligan, whose chief patron, Mrs. Tony, together with her
children and their dozens of dresses, had gone for a summer outing, had
no more on her table than her own family could dispose of.

But the Angel,--"'Eaving bless her," as Mrs. Tomlin was wont to observe
when the Angel, coming to see the baby, would stand with grave wonder,
touching the pallid little cheek with a rosy finger to make the baby
smile,--the Angel noted nothing of all this. Even the memory of
"_Mamma_" was fading, and Mary, Norma, the Tenement, the friendly
children swarming staircase and doorway, were fast becoming her small
world.

With instinct born of her profession, the chorus-lady had long ago
recognized the wonderful grace and buoyancy of the child's every
movement, and to her surprise found that the baby had quite a knowledge
of dancing.

"Who taught you how, my precious?" she would ask, when the child, as if
from the very love of motion, would catch and spread her skirts, and,
with pointed toe, trip about the room, "tell your Norma who taught the
darling how to dance?"

The baby glancing over her shoulder, with the little frown of
displeasure that always greeted such ignorance on Norma's part, had but
one reply: "Tante," she would declare, and continue her measured walk
about the floor. So, for pastime, Norma began teaching her the figures
of a dance then on the boards at the Opera House, to which her little
ladyship lent herself with readiness. The motions, sometimes approaching
the grotesque in the lean and elderly chorus-lady as she bobbed about
the limited space, courtesying, twirling, pirouetting, her blonde hair
done up in kids,--herself in the abbreviated toilet of pink calico sack
and petticoat reserved for home hours, changed to unconscious grace and
innocent abandon in the light, clean-limbed child, who learned with
quickness akin to instinct, and who seemed to follow Norma's movements
almost before they were completed.

"It is wonderful--amazing!" Miss Bonkowski would exclaim, pausing for
breath, "it is _genius_," and her voice would pause and fall reverently
before the words, and the lesson would be resumed with greater
enthusiasm than before.

But many were the days when, Norma away at rehearsal and Mary Carew,