ld 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. An' wasn't it thim same polace
crathurs, too, I'm askin' ye, as took our rainwather cistern away along
of the fevers breakin' out, they made bold to say, the desaivin'
crathers,--an' me a-niver havin' me washin' white a-since, for ye'll
aisy see why, usin' the muddy wather as comes from that hydranth
yirselves!"

Mrs. O'Malligan glanced around triumphantly, shook her head and hurried
on. "An' agin, there's little Joey. Who was it but the polace as come
arristin' the feyther of the boy for batin' of his own wife, and him
sint up for a year, an' she a-dyin' along of bein' weakly an' nobody to
support her, an' Joey left in this very Tiniment an orphan child! Don't
ye be a-callin' in no polace for the loikes of this swate angel choild,
Miss Norma darlint, don't ye be doin' it! An' the most of thim once
foine Irish gintlemen, bad luck to the loikes of thim!"

Mrs. O'Malligan paused,--she was obliged to,--for breath, whereupon Miss
Bonkowski very amiably hastened to declare she meant no harm, having
absolutely no knowledge of the class whatever, "except," with arch
humor, "as presented on the stage, where, as everybody who had seen them
there knew, they were harmless enough, goodness knows!" And the airy
chorus lady shrugged her shoulders and smiled at her own bit of
pleasantry. "But for the matter of that, I still think something ought
to be done, and what other means can we find for restoring the lost
innocent?" and Miss Norma tossed her frizzled blonde head, quite
enjoying, if the truth be told, the touch of romance about the affair.
For once she seemed to be meeting, in real life, a situation worthy of
the boards of The Garden Opera House, in whose stage vernacular a
missing child was always a "lost innocent." "If we do not call on the
police, Mrs. O'Malligan, how are we to ever find the child's mother?"

Here Mary Carew looked up, and there was something like a metallic click
about Mary's hard, dry tones as she spoke, for the years she had spent
in making jeans pantaloons at one dollar and a half a dozen had not been
calculated