When Norma, on reaching home with the tired child, finished her story, which, truth to tell, lost nothing of its dramatic possibilities in her telling, Mary Carew looked up with her face so set and white that Norma, who had been too intent in her recital to notice the gradual change in the other's manner, was startled.

"Don't take on so, Mary," she cried, removing the child's wraps as she spoke, "I've always warned you she wasn't any deserted child, haven't I?" but there was a real tenderness in Norma's voice as she reminded the other of it.

"You'd better get your supper," Mary replied, "it's near time for you to be going," and she pushed her work aside and held out her arms for the child, her face softening as it did for nothing else in the world.

Tired, cold, dazed with crying, the drooping little soul crept into Mary's arms, which closed hungrily and held her close as the sobs began to come again.

Unlike her usual self, Mary let Norma prepare the supper unaided, while she sat gazing down on the flushed little face pillowed on her arm, and drew off the broken shoes, chafing and rubbing the cold, tired feet with her hand.

She wanted no supper, she declared shortly in response to Norma's call, but on being pressed, came to the table and drank a little tea thirstily, and fed the sleepy child from her own plate.

"Now don't take on so, Mary, don't fret about it while I'm gone," Norma begged as she hurried off to her nightly duties. "I'll miss her just as much as you, if it does turn out that we have to give her up, and for the darling's own sake, Mary, we ought to be glad to think she's going back to her own."

But Mary, laying the sleeping child down in the crib, burst forth as the door closed, "An' it's Norma Bonkowski can tell me I ought to be glad! She can tell me that, and then say she'll miss her the same as me! It's little then she knows about my feelings,—for it'll be to lose the one bright thing outer my life as has ever come in it. 'Go back to her own!' Like as not her own's a mother like them fine ones I see on the Avenoos as leaves their little ones to grow up with hired nurses. 'Give her up—give—her up—' Norma says so easy like,—when every word chokes me—" and struggling against her sobs, Mary fell on her knees beside the crib, burying her face in the covers, "an' I must go on sittin' here day after day sewin', an' my precious one gone; stitchin' an' stitchin', one day jus' like another stretchin' on ahead, long as life itself, an' no little feet a-patterin' up the stairs, an' no little voice a-callin' on me,—nothin' to live for, nothin' to keep me from thinkin' an' thinkin' till I'm nigh to goin' crazy with the stitchin'—give her up?"—a wild look was on Mary's face as she raised it suddenly, a desperate one in her eyes—"I'll not give her up—she's mine——"

For a moment she gazed at the flushed face framed about with the sunny hair, then she rose, and, moving about the room with feverish haste, she gathered together certain of the garments which hung from nails about the walls, and rolled them into a bundle. Then from between the mattress and the boards of the bed she drew an old purse, and counted its contents.

"Two dollars and seventy-five,—eighty-five, ninety,—that's mine,—the rest is Norma's," and she returned the remainder to the hiding-place. Then, putting on her own hat and shawl, she lifted the drowsy child, still dressed, and slipping on her cloak, rolled her in addition, in the shawl found with her that July morning almost five months before.

Then grimly picking up child and bundle, with one guilty, frightened look about the room that for so many years had meant home to her, she went out the door and hurried cautiously down the steps and out into the snowy night.

*****

It was half-past twelve when Norma Bonkowski, returning, climbed the stairs of the Tenement wearily. She was cold, for her clothes were thin; she was tired, for the day had been a hard one; she was dispirited, for the manager had been more than usually sharp and critical of her performance that night.

When she entered her door the room was dark. The lamp had burned itself out and the room was filled with the sickening smell. The fire, too, was out, save for a few red embers. With a sudden realization that something was wrong, Norma groped about the littered mantel-shelf for a match, then hastily lit an end of candle. Bed and crib were empty, half the nails bare of their garments.

"Gone!" cried Norma, beginning to wring her hands. Intuitively she felt what had happened. Desperate at the thought of losing her darling, Mary Carew had fled.

But in a moment a re-assuring look replaced the fright on the blue, pinched features. "I know Mary better than she knows herself," declared the optimistic Norma, "she'll be back," and tossing her blonde head resolutely, she threw aside her hat and cape and began to rekindle the fire.

"I'll put on the tea-kettle, too," she told herself, "and be real comfortable and extravagant for once, and have a cup of tea ready when they come," for the good lady had no intention of going to bed, assuring herself she would not sleep if she did. So, moving about, she refilled the lamp, and drawing the machine nearer the stove, began to sew where Mary had left off. "I wonder how she thinks to make a livin'," Norma asked herself, smiling grimly, "seein' the machine's left behind. Poor Mary! I know her too well, she'll be back before morning."

One, two,—then three, a neighboring church clock tolled, and Norma stitched and waited, stitched and waited. Several times she fell asleep, her head upon the machine, to awake with a start, hurry to the door and listen.

A little before four she heard a step, and running to the door caught poor Mary as she staggered in, half-sinking with her burdens. Taking the frightened, wailing child and putting her down by the fire, Norma dragged Mary to a chair.

"Hush," she commanded, when Mary tried to speak, "I know—I understand," and for once regardless of the child's comfort, she dragged the sodden shoes from Mary's feet, drew off the wet skirts and wrapped her in anything, everything, warm she could find. By this time Mary was sobbing wildly, and Norma, half-distracted, turned to draw the tea and to toast some slices of the stale bread she had waiting.

"Now," she said, jerking the table around before Mary, then sitting down and taking up the child, "you drink that, Mary Carew, before you dare to say one word!"

The child responded promptly to the warmth and food and began to chatter. "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."

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. I had been walkin' a good while after I left here, for I had laid my plans hasty-like, to cross the river an' get a room on the other side, for I was jus' outer my head, Norma, along of the thought of losin' her,—an' as I said, I had been walkin' I don' know how long, plannin' as I went, when the darlin' woke up, an' begun to cry. An' jus' then a man opened a door to come out of a place as had a great sign up, an' in the light as come out with him, he caught sight of us.

"'Haven't you no place to go fer shelter, my poor woman?' he says, for I was kinder breathless, an' pantin', fer the darlin' an' the bundle was a weight to carry. But I was that tired out, I couldn't say nothin' but jus' begin to cry. Seem' which he says, 'This is one of the All-Night-Missions, come in an' I will see if you may stay until morning.'

"Thinkin' as how th' child might be sufferin' with the cold, I follered him in, a-plannin' to leave at daylight an' get across the river. I set down on a bench where he pointed me, an' when I got my breath I begun to look around.

"It was a nice place, Norma, with picters round th' walls an' a good fire an' people sittin' round listenin' to a man talkin', an' when he stopped, a lady begun to sing a song about some sheep as were lost.

"Angel here, she had stopped crying soon as she got warm, an' now she set up, peart an' smilin', pleased to death with the singin'. An' when she was done her song, the lady went to talkin', an' right along, Norma, she was talkin' straight at me. It mus' have been th' Lord as tol' her to do it, else how did she know?

"'Rachel,' says she, an' I reckon this Rachel's another poor such a one as me, don't you, Norma?—'Rachel a cryin' for her children an' there wasn't any comfort for her because they weren't there!' That's how she begun. 'There isn't no love,' she said, 'no love on earth like the love a mother has for her child, you might take it away,' she said, 'an' try to fill its place with money an' everything good in life, but you can't make her stop wantin' her child an' thinkin' about it, not if you was to separate them fifty years; or you might try to beat it out of a mother or starve it out of her, but if the mother love had ever been there, it'd be there still.' That's what she said, Norma. An' she s'posed like the child was lost an' she said, 'even if there was a lot of children besides that a one, would she stay at home, contented like, with them as was safe? No,' she said, 'that mother wouldn't, she'd start out and go hunt for the one as was lost,—even to faintin' along the way, till she found the child or give up an' died. That's how the Lord cares for us'—she said, but I didn't hear no more after that, for I jus' set there turned like to stone, goin' over what she said, the darlin' asleep again in my lap. An' seems like I must a set there for hours, Norma, fightin' against the Lord.

"'An' if you as ain't her mother wants her so,' at last, somethin' inside says to me, 'how much more must th' mother what's lost her want her?' and at that, Norma, the Lord won an' I got up an' come back with the child."