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Miss Carew, tall, bony, and more commonly known to the Tenement as Miss C'rew, of somewhat tart and acrid temper, being pressed for her version of the story, paused in her awkward and intent efforts at soothing the beautiful, fair-haired child upon her lap and explained that she was stepping out her door that morning with her water-bucket, thinking to get breakfast ready before Miss Bonkowski awoke, when a child's frightened crying startled her, coming from a room across the hall which for some weeks had been for rent.
"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?"
An' who but these same polace, I ask ye, was it, gettin' this Tiniment, as has always held it's head up respectable, a-gettin' this Tiniment in the noospapers last winter along of that case of small-pox, an' puttin' a yellow flag out, an afther that nobody a-willin' to give me their washin', an Miss C'rew here as could get no pants to make, an' yerself, Miss Norma, darlint, an' no disrespect to you a-spakin' out so bold, a-layin' idle because of no thayater a-willin' to have ye.
"Kiss Angel bye," she commanded, tugging at Mary's skirts, "her goin' to Tante," the little face fierce with determination, every curl bobbing with the emphatic nods of the little head, "kiss her bye, C'rew," and the wild sobs began again.
"C'rew did take Angel away, Norma, and it was cold and Angel cwied, and C'rew cwied, but the nice lady sang." "I tried to run off with her," sobbed Mary, "but the Lord stood right in my way an' turned me back." "Whatever do you mean, Mary?" demanded Norma. "Just that, just what I said. I was a-runnin' off so's to keep her fer my own, an' th' Lord stopped me an' sent me back."
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.
The child, nodding on Norma's knee like a rosy little Mandarin, caught the sacred name. "I p'ay the Lord mine and Joey's and eve'ybody's soul to keep," she murmured with drowsy effort, thinking C'rew was urging her to say the little prayer Miss Ruth had taught her. "He will, He will," said Mary Carew with awed emphasis, "if ever I doubted it before, Norma, I know now He will.
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