"And you, what did you say?" asked Miss Ruth, gently, watching Mary with tender eyes as she held the beautiful, chattering little creature so jealously in her arms, and thinking as she watched, of the life and reputation commonly accorded the great singer.
"Say?" came from Miss Bonkowski quickly, her befrizzled blonde tresses fairly a-tremble with her intensity, and sticking the hat-pin recklessly in and out of the lace hat she had taken off, "what did we say, you ask, and knowing, as you and every body must, the kind of life and future it would mean for a child that takes to things like this 'n does! With all her money and her soft, winning ways, it is better, far better, for the child with her disposition, to starve along with Mary an' me, than grow up to that, if it was nothing more to be afraid of than being left to servants and hotel people and dragged around from place to place in such a life as it is. Not that I mean, ma'am," and Miss Bonkowski spoke with quick pride, "that being in the profession need to make any body what they shouldn't be, for I know plenty of 'em of the best, and am one myself, though only a Chorus, but what with what's said about this one, even with her good heart and generous ways, she's not the one to have our Angel, though she meant it for the best."
"An' she said," Mary Carew took it up, "as how Norma's gettin' old, and 'll be dropped afore long from the Chorus, an' she offered her, she did, in this very room, a' here before me, to buy out a Costumer as is leavin' the business, an' start Norma in for herself, along of her knowin' how to run a business such as that."
"And oh girls," declared Miss Stannard as she told this part of the story to her assistant teachers afterward, "it was the bravest thing I've met among the poor people yet. Think of the courage of those two women, with poverty grimmer than they have yet known, ahead of them in all probability, yet determined to resist the temptation because they are assured it is not well for the child. Picture making jean pantaloons, year in, year out, at barely living wages, yet having the courage to put the matter so resolutely aside. After that, I could not bring myself to tell them they had done wrong in the beginning in not notifying the authorities. Of course there is some mystery about it. I cannot for a moment accept their explanation of it. The child, beyond question, is well born and has been carefully trained. And she goes about among all the strange, queer inmates of that Tenement house as fearlessly as a little queen. But, oh, the one that is a chorus-singer! If you could see her! So lean, so sallow, so airy and full of manner. But I will never laugh at another elderly chorus-singer again in my life, she is grand, she's heroic," and the pretty Kindergartner threaded gay worsteds into needles with a vigor which lent emphasis to her words.