o her?"

True, she had cautioned Joey, over and over again about keeping the
child away from the window, and about staying right in the room until
her return; but, notwithstanding, Norma could hardly have gotten to the
corner before Joey, promptly forgetting his promise, and finding the
room a dull playground, was enticing his charge into the hall and
straightway down the stairs.

At the bottom of the second flight, the two children came upon Mr.
Tomlin entertaining two gentlemen callers. Only the week before, the
Tenement had been called upon to mourn with the Tomlins, whose baby had
been carried away in a little coffin after the fashion of tenement
babies when the thermometer climbs up the scale near to one hundred. And
since then, Mrs. Tomlin, refusing to be comforted, had taken to her bed,
thus making it necessary for her husband to receive his company in the
hall.

The callers, who, together with their host, were sitting on the steps,
moved aside to allow the children to pass. The larger of the gentlemen
was unpleasantly dirty, with a ragged beard and a shock of red hair. The
other was a little man with quick black eyes and a pleasant smile.
Passing these by, the Angel paused on the step above Mr. Tomlin and
slipped her arms around his neck.

"Pick a back, my Tomlin," she sweetly commanded in the especially
imperious tones she reserved for Mr. Tomlin's sex, "get up, horsey."

The good-natured giant, for such her Tomlin was, shouldered her as one
would some precious burden liable to break, grinned, stood up and
obediently trotted the length of the hall and back.

Joey, meanwhile, legs apart, stood eyeing the visitors attentively.
"Keep up that kind of talk," the dirty gentleman was urging, "and we've
got him. He's worth any three of ordinary strength, and he's a favorite
with the men, too."

Here the horse and his rider returned. "What a got in a pocket for
Angel?" the young autocrat proceeded to demand when lifted down. Of all
her masculine subjects in the Tenement, Mr. Tomlin was her veriest
slave.

He produced a soiled but gay advertising picture. Her ladyship put out
her hand. "But you must give us a dance fer it," coaxed Mr. Tomlin,
anxious to display the talent of the Tenement. "She's the young 'un as
dances at the Op'ry House, the kid is," he explained to his visitors,
"they've had her pictoor in the papers, too. Miss Bonkowski, the
chorus-lady upstairs, she's got one of them, came out in a Sunday