confidential wink, and edged up to the smiling Angel's side. "Yer jus'
leave her wid me," he responded reassuringly, "an' I ain't goin' to do
nothin' as ain't square."

And Miss Norma, whose faith in human nature, phoenix-like, ever sprang
up anew from the blighted hopes of former trust, accordingly turned her
darling over to Joey and hurried off. "For she's obliged to have some
one to play with and to get some fresh air somehow," the chorus-lady
argued for her own re-assuring, though it remains a mystery as to how
she could deceive herself into considering the garbage-scented
atmosphere of the neighborhood as fresh, "and Joey's by far the best of
the lot around here."

Meanwhile, the small subject of all this solicitude, in clean frock and
smiling good-humor, responded at once to Joey's proposal, and the two
sat down on the curbstone. In the constant companionship of their two
months' acquaintance, the little Major's growing interest in the Angel
had assumed almost fatherly proportions. Hitherto this zeal had taken
itself out in various expeditions for her entertainment similar to the
one ending in Mr. Tomlin's rescue. To-day it was produced in the shape
of a somewhat damaged peach purchased with a stray penny. But the Angel,
in her generous fashion, insisting on a division of the dainty, Joey at
first stoutly declining, weakened and took half, seeing to it, however,
that his was the damaged side.

"When yer was up there," he observed unctiously as he devoured his
portion--and he nodded his round little head toward that foggy and smoky
expanse about them, popularly believed by the population about the
Tenement to be the abode of angels--"when yer was up there, yer had
these kinder things every day, didn't yer?"

If her small ladyship's word could be taken for it, in that other life
still remembered by her, she had everything, even to hoky-poky ad
libitum, to her heart's content, though her testimony framed itself into
somewhat more halting and uncertain English.

"What did yer do up there, anyhow?" queried Joey curiously.

"Danced," the Angel declared, daintily devoting herself to her portion
of the peach, "her danced and--her danced."

This earthly vocation seemed to fail to appeal to Joey's imagination.
"Nothin' else?" he demanded anxiously. "Didn't yer never do nothin'
else?"

But the Angel had fallen to poking the green contents of the gutter with
a stick, and seemed to find the present more fascinating to