hot, tired, alas, even cross,--totally irresponsive to anything but the
stitching of jean pantaloons,--the Angel would grow tired of the stuffy
room and long for the forbidden dangers and delights of Tenement
sidewalks. Then, often, with nothing else to do, she would catch up her
tiny skirts and whirl herself into the dance Norma had taught her, in
and out among the furniture crowding the room, humming little broken
snatches of music for herself, bending, swaying, her bright eyes full of
laughter as they met Mary's tired ones, her curls bobbing, until
breathless, hot and weary she would drop on the floor and fall asleep,
her head pillowed on her soft dimpled arm.

But on one of these long, hot mornings when the heat seemed to stream in
as from a furnace at the window and even the flies buzzed languidly, the
Angel was seized with another idea for passing time. Her vocabulary of
Tenement vernacular was growing too, and she chattered unceasingly.

"C'rew, didn't a fink Angel might go find her mamma?" she demanded on
this particular morning.

"To-morrow," said C'rew, and the click in her tired voice sounded even
above the whirring of the heavy machine, for C'rew's head ached and her
back ached, and possibly her heart ached too, for herself and Norma and
the child and poor people in one-windowed tenement rooms in general.

"Didn't a fink she might go play with little Joey?"

"No," said Mary decidedly, and she leaned back wearily and pushed her
thin, colorless hair off her hot, throbbing temples, "no, you played
down on the pavement with Joey an' th' rest yesterday, an the sun made
you sick. But," with haste to avert the cloud lowering over the baby
face, "if you'll be real good an' not worry her, you can go down an' see
Mrs. O'Malligan."

Fair weather prevailed again on the pretty face, and at Mary's word the
Angel was at the open door, tugging at the chair placed crossways to
keep her from venturing out unobserved, and with a sigh and a guilty
look at the pile of unfinished work, Mary rose and carried her down to
the good Irish lady's door, and, with a word, hurried back.

Mrs. O'Malligan, big, beaming and red, smiled a moist but hearty welcome
from over her tubs toward the little figure in the faded gingham
standing shyly in the open doorway. "An' it's proud to see ye I am, me
Angel," she declared, "though there's never a childer in call to be
playin' wid ye."

But the Angel, nothing daunted, smiled back in turn,