e door with heavy haste, while Miss Bonkowski hospitably
turned to bring forth what the apartment could boast in the way of
breakfast.

Meanwhile the other ladies withdrew to the one window of the small room
to discuss the situation.

"That's it, I'm sure," one was saying, while she twisted up her back
hair afresh, "for my man, he says he saw a woman pass our door yesterday
afternoon, kinder late, an' go on up steps with a young 'un in her arms.
He never seen her come back, he says, but Mis' Tomlin here, she says,
she seen a woman dressed nice, come down afterwards seemin' in a hurry,
but she didn't have no child, didn't you say, Mis' Tomlin?"

Thus appealed to, timid little Mrs. Tomlin shifted her wan-faced,
fretting baby from one arm to the other and asserted the statement to be
quite true.

"An'ther case of desartion," pronounced Mrs. O'Malligan, having
returned meanwhile with a cup filled with a thin blue liquid known to
the Tenement as _milk_, "a plain case of desartion, an' whut's to be
done about it, I niver can say!"

"Done!" cried Miss Bonkowski, on her knees before Mary and the child,
crumbling some bread into the milk, "and what are the police for but
just such cases?"

The other ladies glanced apprehensively at Mrs. O'Malligan, that lady's
bitter hatred of these guardians of the public welfare being well known,
since that day when three small O'Malligans were taken in the act of
relieving a passing Italian gentleman of a part of his stock of bananas.
Mrs. O'Malligan had paid their fines in the City Court, had thrashed
them around as many times as her hot Irish temper had rekindled at the
memory, but had never forgiven the police for the disgrace to the family
of O'Malligan. And being the well-to-do personage of The Tenement, it
should be remarked that Mrs. O'Malligan's sentiments were generally
deferred to, if not always echoed by her neighbors.

"An' is it the polace ye'd be a-callin' in?" she burst forth volubly,
reproach and indignation written upon the round red face she turned upon
Miss Norma, "the polace? An' would ye be turnin' over the darlin' to the
loikes of thim, to be locked up along with thaves an' murtherers afore
night?" And, as a chorus of assenting murmurs greeted her, with her
broad, flat foot thrust forward and hands upon her ample hips, Mrs.
O'Malligan hurried on.

"The polace is it ye say? An' who but these same polace, I ask ye, was
it, gettin' this Tiniment,--as has always he