INTRODUCES THE LITTLE MAJOR.
While the fine, embroidered dress in which the Angel had made her
appearance was all Mrs. O'Malligan had claimed it as to daintiness and
quality, after a few days' wear, its daintiness gave place to dirt, its
quality thinned to holes.
Upon this the Tenement was called into consultation. The Angel must be
clothed, but what, even from its cosmopolitan wardrobe, could the house
produce suitable for angelic wear? Many lands indeed were represented by
the inmates who now called its shelter home, but none from that country
where Angels are supposed to have their being.
"On my word," quoth Miss Bonkowski to the ladies gathered in the room at
her bidding, and Miss Norma gave an eloquent shrug and elevated her
blackened eyebrows as she spoke, "on my word I believe her little heart
would break if she had to stay in dirty, ragged clothes very long. Such
a darling for being washed and curled, such a precious for always
cleaning up! It makes me sure she must be different,"--Miss Norma was
airy but she was also humble, recognizing perhaps her own inherent
shrinking from too frequent an application of soap and water--"she's
something different, born and bred, from such as me!"
But at this the ladies murmured. Miss Bonkowski had been their pride,
their boast, nor did their allegiance falter now, even in the face of
the Angel's claims to superiority.
Miss Bonkowski was not ungrateful for this expression of loyalty, which
she acknowledged with a smile, as she tightened the buckle on the very
high-heeled and coquettish slipper she was rejuvenating, but she
protested, nevertheless, that all this did not alter the fact that the
Angel must be clothed.
"As fer th' dirt," said the energetic Mrs. O'Malligan, on whose ample
lap the Angel was at that moment sitting in smiling friendliness, "sure
an' I'll be afther washin' her handful uv clothes ivery wake, meself,
an' what with them dozens of dresses I'm doin' fer Mrs. Tony's childers
all th' time, it's surely a few she'd be a-givin' me, whin I tell her
about th' darlint, an' me a niver askin' fer nothin' at all, along of
all mine bein' boys. Sure an' I'll be a-beggin' her this very day, I
will, whin I carry me washin' home."
And Mrs. O'Malligan being as good as her word, and Mrs. Tony
successfully interviewed, the good Irish lady returned home in triumph
bearing a large bundle of cast-off garments, and at once summoned the
Tenement to her apartments.
The first arrived ladies were already giving vent to their appreciation
of the Tony generosity when Miss Carew and Miss Bonkowski arrived,
Mary's bony face, in deference to the angelic prejudices now ruling her,
red and smarting from an energetic application of the same soap as
ministered to her room's needs, but beaming with a grim pride as she
bore the radiant Angel, wild with delight at getting out of her narrow
quarters.
Yielding to the popular voice, though not without reluctance, Mary
placed her darling in Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and the process of
exhibiting and trying on the garments began at once.
For a time her small ladyship yielded graciously, until seeing her
pretty feet bared that the little stockings and half worn shoes might be
fitted, she suddenly cast her eyes about the circle of ladies, and won
by the pretty, dark beauty of young Mrs. Repetto, the Tenement's bride
of a month's standing, imperiously demanded that lady to take the pink
toes to market.
Overcome with having the public attention thus drawn upon her, pretty
Mrs. Repetto in the best Italian-English she could muster, confessed her
inability to either understand or comply, whereupon the baby, bearing no
malice in her present high good-humor, proceeded to take them herself.
"This little pig went to market," the angelic accents declared, while
her ladyship smiled sweetly upon Mrs. Repetto, and Mary Carew
breathlessly motioned for silence with all the pride of a doting
parent.
"This little pig stayed home--" the ladies on the outskirts pressed near
that they too might hear.
"This little pig had bread and cheese," whereupon Mrs. Repetto
recovering, went down on her knees to be nearer the scene of exploit.
"This little pig had none;" the interest now was breathless, and as the
last little pig went squeaking home the ladies nearest fell upon the
darling and covered her with kisses.
"An' it's jus' that smart she is, all the time," declared Mary Carew
proudly, "an' 'taint like she's showin' off, either, is it, Norma?"
When at last the trying on was over, and the Tony generosity was
sufficiently enlarged upon, the ladies, as is the way with the best of
the sex, fell into a mild gossip before separating. And while racy bits
of Tenement shortcomings were being handed around, the small object of
this gathering, too young, alas, to know the joys denied her because of
her limited abilities to understand the nature of the conversation,
slipped down from Mrs. O'Malligan's lap, and eluding Mary's absent
hold, proceeded to journey about the room, until reaching the open
door, she took her way, unobserved, out of the O'Malligan first floor
front and leaving its glories of red plush furniture and lace curtains
behind her, forthwith made her way out the hall door into the street.
The hot, garbage-strewn pavements and sunbaked gutters swarmed with the
sons and daughters of the Tenement. Directly opposite its five-storied
front was the rear entrance to the Fourth Regiment Armory. And there, at
that moment, a sad-eyed, swarthy Italian,--swinging his hand-organ down
on the asphalt pavement in front of the Armory's open doors, was
beginning to grind out his melodies. And with the first note, children
came running, from doorstep and curb, from sidewalk and gutter, while,
at the same moment, in the open door of the Armory appeared a small,
chubby-cheeked boy, who had upon his head a soldier cap so much too
large for him as to cover the tips of his ears entirely, and who,
moreover, wore, buckled about his waist, a belt gay as to trimmings and
glittering with silver finishings. If the Fourth Regiment boasted a
Company of Lilliputian Guards here surely was a member.
The Angel, in the Tenement door, was enchanted. How different a world
from that upstairs room under the roof! She kept step to the music and
nodded her head to the fascinating little boy in the Armory door. And
the sharp eyes of that young gentleman had no sooner espied the nodding
little creature in the doorway opposite, than heels together, head
erect, up went a quick hand to the military cap. The Angel was being
saluted, and while her ignorance of the fact prevented her appreciating
that honor, the friendliness of the little boy was alluring. Down the
steps she came, her little feet tripping to the measure of the music,
her skirts outheld, and flitting across the pavement and over the curb,
she made for the group of children in the street. Cobblestones, however,
being strange to the baby feet, up those dancing members tripped and
down the Angel fell, just as a wagon came dashing around the corner of
the streets.
Out rushed the small boy from the Armory door, and, scattering the crowd
around the organ, caught the fallen Angel by the arm, and raised his
hand with an air of authority, as, with a grin, the driver on the wagon
drew up his horse and surveyed the group, and the sad-eyed Italian,
recognizing the superior attraction, shouldered his organ and moved on.
"Hello," cried the man on the wagon seeing the child was not hurt, "yer
can soak me one if it ain't little Joe! Where'd yer git dem togs, kid?
What'r' yer goin' in fer anyhow, baby perlice?"
The region in the neighborhood of Joey's waist swelled with pride, and
his chubby face bore a look of wounded dignity. "There ain't no perlice
about this yere, Bill, it's a sojer I be, see?"
Being pressed by Bill to explain himself, Joey unbent. "Yer see, Bill,
Dad ain't never showed up fer to git me--seen anything of Dad since he
got out, Bill?"
Bill nodded.
"What's he up to now?" queried Joey.
"Shovin' the queer," admitted Bill laconically, "nabbed right off an' in
the cooler waitin' his turn, yer won't be troubled by him fer quite a
spell, I'll give yer dat fer a pointer, see?"
Joey saw, and for the space of half a second seemed somewhat sobered by
the intelligence. "I guessed as much," said he, "yer see, after he got
nabbed first, mammy she--yer didn't know as mammy took an' died, did
yer, Bill?" and Joey faltered and let the Angel take possession of his
cap and transfer it to her own curly head while the Tenement children
applauded with jeering commendation, seeing there was a standing feud
between Joey and the rest of the juvenile populace over its possession.
"No," Bill allowed, he did not know it, but, seeing that she was always
ailing, Bill was in no wise surprised.
"An'--an' since then, I'm stayin' over ter th' Arm'ry wid Old G. A. R.
Yer know him, Bill, Old G. A. R. what takes care of th' Arm'ry. He was
there afore yer left th' grocery."
Bill remembered the gentleman.
"I stays wid him an' he drills me an' makes me scrub, hully gee, how he
do make me wash meself, Bill! An' there's one sojer-man, th' Cap'n, he
give me these togs, he did, an' he tol' Old G. A. R. to lem'me eat along
wid him over ter Dutchy's Res'traunt," nodding toward a cheap
eating-house at the corner, "an' he'd stand fer it. They calls me major,
all of 'em to th' Arm'ry, Bill, see?" and Joey was waxing voluble
indeed, when he turned to see the mob of jeering children make off up
the street, his cap in their midst, while the wailing Angel was being
rescued from under the horse's very hoofs by Mary Carew.
Joey put his spirit of inquiry before even his cap. "Is she er Angel,
say?" he inquired of Miss Carew, turning his back on Bill without
ceremony who with a grin and a nod to the group of Tenement ladies at
the door, drove off, "I heerd yer had er Angel over there, but I didn't
know as it was straight, what they was givin' me, see?"
"That's what she is, the darling yonder," declared Miss Bonkowski from
the curbstone, nodding airily, "you've got it straight this time, Joey.
And if what Peter O'Malligan says about your picking her up just now is
so, you're welcome to come over some time and play with her."
"Yes, it's true," supplemented Mary Carew, trying to pacify the
struggling Angel in her arms who, gazing after the children, showed a
decided inclination to descend to human level and mingle with them of
earth, "it's true an' that's jus' what she is,--the Angel of this
Tenement, an', as Norma says, you're free to come over and play with
her, though there ain't many of you I'd say it to;" and with that the
tall, gaunt Mary bearing the baby, followed Norma into the house and up
the narrow, broken stairs, and along the dark halls past door after door
closed upon its story of squalor and poverty, until, at last, panting
with the child's weight, she reached their own abode under the roof.
"Which," as Mary had been wont, in the past, to observe, "was about as
near Heaven as the poor need look to get." But now, for some reason,
these bitter speeches were growing less frequent on Mary Carew's lips
since she opened her door to entertain an Angel.