"Yosie bring Angel way a way," explained the baby obediently. "Yosie say Angel be a good girl and her come yite back. Where Yosie,--Angel wants Yosie to come now," and the plaintive little voice broke into a sob, as the child looked from one to the other of the circle beseechingly. The ladies exchanged pitying glances while the persevering Miss Norma rattled an empty spool in a tin cup violently to distract the baby's thoughts. "And how old is Angel?" she continued. Again the tears were checked, while the grave, disapproving surprise which Miss Bonkowski's ignorance seemed to call forth, once more overspread the small face, "Didn't a know her are three?" she returned reprovingly, reaching for the improvised and alluring plaything. "Yes, yes," murmured Miss Bonkowski apologetically, "Angel is three years old, of course, a great, big girl." "A gwate, big girl," repeated the baby, nodding her pretty head approvingly, "that what Yosie say," then with abrupt change of tone, "where her breakfast, her wants her milk!" "An' she shall have it, sure," cried Mrs. O'Malligan promptly, and retired out the 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?"