They were "dirt-cheap," Henrietta declared, as we watched the plaster casts pass over the heads of the crowd, out of which by and by emerged our shopmate, little Angela, clasping a Madonna under her arm and counting her change.
The three of us resumed our homeward walk together, without any comment until Angela had satisfied herself about the correctness of her change.
"What a slop you are!" remarked Henrietta, as her critical eye swept over the undeveloped little figure in the long, greasy black-taffeta coat, which, flapping open in front, disclosed the pasty surface of a drabbled blue skirt. "Why don't you never turn your skirt, Angela?"
"Oh, what's the dif?" replied Angela. "There ain't no fellows going to look at me any more now."
This reply, commonplace enough, might have passed unnoticed had there not been a note of tragedy in her deep contralto voice.
"Don't you know?" she demanded, scowling at Henrietta's silly, vacant "tee-hee."
"A grass-widow!" I echoed in astonishment, and looked upon the childish creature in sheer unbelief--for child I had always considered her. "Why, how old are you, anyway, Angela?"
"And you're really married!" I exclaimed again, quite aghast and altogether innocent of the construction which Angela immediately put upon the qualifying adverb.
"Well, if you don't believe me look at that!" she cried, and stuck out a tiny, dirty hand, with finger-nails worn to the quick, and decorated with a gold band broad enough and heavy enough to have held a woman ten times Angela's weight and size in the bands of indissoluble matrimony; "I was married for fair, and I was married lawful. A priest did it."
"Oh, I didn't mean to question that," I hastened to apologize with some confusion. "Only you seemed so very young, I thought you were just joking me."
"Well, it's no joke to be married and have a baby, specially when you've got to s'port it," returned the girl, her lips still pouting.
The bedraggled little prima donna nodded; the pout on the lips blossomed into a smile, and a look of infinite tenderness transformed the tired, dark little face. "It's up to the crèche--that's where I'm going now. The ladies keeps it awful good for me."
"And it's such a lovely baby, too!" declared Henrietta, softly. "I seen it once."