The banner-enterprise., 1883-11-10
the BABYS MISSION.

The Mulaneys commenced with bat
tered up old grand father who possessed
disastrous talent for getting into trouble
and staying there, and ended in crumb
of baby, whose name had been twisted
hy some inconceivablc process from John
Patrick Michael into Tim. lie was
such skimpy baby that nature must
have patched him up out Of the cuttings
aud scrapngs of luckler patterns, and,
falling short of sight, had made it up to
him in gloriously big slate gray eyes that
"opened wide but could not see.
There was a widow and some odds and
ends of children wedged in between the
two, and all lived together in stufy lit
tie house that was as like as peas to the
mob OF other stuffy houses that disgraced
both sides of the street-only it wasn' t
street, after all, but an alley, choked up
with want and favored with babies; with
a red lamp swung out at one corner
where the beer shop stoop, and dismal
little Indian upholding with its one foot
(the other might have been in its grave
for all Stun Alley knew or bothered) the
cigar store interests at the other.
Grandfather Muancy owned a COW
that came as near his ideal as any COW
could that gave milk instead of whisky,
and he divided his time impartially be-
tween it and those patriotic meetings the
Alleyites devoted to poor Ireland and
worse poteen. Then there was pig
two pigs-tucker under the woodshed,
that squealed and scuilla and grunted,
and a straddling rooster that cackled, re-
gardless of sex, and cat that mewed,
and dog that whined-and then, by
way Of rivalry, the odds and ends Of Mu-
laneys, who squealed and shufiled and
cackled and whined worse than them all
put together.
Mother Mulaney was one Of those
misery. ridden widows the world knows
by heart-a woman who laundried her
life away with all the odds and ends tug
ging at her gathers all save Kitty, who
even resented the fgurative apron-strings
now that she had asserted her superior
ity to them by standing in a store up
town.
Pretty Kitty Her eyes were Irish
blue, her hair was Irish black, her heart
but all Stun Alley stouty denied that
Kitty Mulaney had onc' She was tail
and straight as poplar sappling, was
Kitty, and she had a trick Of lifting her
eyebrows at her neighbors, which was
rather superb, but pretty conclusive evil
dence that the diagnosis of Stun Alley
was correct.
How she had managed to grow up un.
der such cramped circumstances, or how
the beauty her mother had left behind
her in the peat bogs Of Ireland along with
her youth had found such a glorious res
direction in her face, never puzzled the
brain of Miss Kitty Muanoy-she was
tall, and there were the Irish eyes and
the clouds of black HAIR tantalizing her
from the cracked bit Of mirror day after
day, till her vanity bled at the idea of
wasting so much sweetness on two old
people and a gang of noisy cubs-tor
there was enough of Grandfather Mu-
laney's blood rioting through her veins to
warrant that young person in calling a
spade spade.
1t was no crime, surely, to rebel against
the fate that had cast her among them
like Jewel in in dust heap, but if it
had been rankest treason Miss Mulaney
would have gone on rebelling all the
same. Slum Alley was good enough,
perhaps, for her moldy old grandfather
and those knucklc bones Of children, but
fate should have remembered that she
was Kitty Muaney, and cut her cloth
accordingly. She loved her mother, of
course, but deep down in her heart (ior
she really had one. though it was so
cramplcd and stihed under its heaps of
vanity and ruinous pride that slum Alley
might well be forgiven its doubts she
knew she was ashamed Of the toll stained
face and naked brogue, and she never
meant to forgive her father for dying as
poor as he did.
Those other girls at the shop could
have their evenings to themselves, with
trip now and then TO the theatre, and
friends they were not ashamed to own,
while she-she trudge home to
bare floors and sud stained walls, to
coarse fare hcaped on cloudy dishes, with
the odds and ends squealing and scuiflng
about her while she ate it, and Baby Tim
actually squirming up in her lap from
under the table to coil his wien arms
around her dainty waist.
She was tired, of course, and there
was little exhilaratioD 10 kissing scrap
of face that was black with dirt and
generally blue with bruiscs-so Miss Mu.
laney never did it-and the child, whose
love for his eldest sister, like the brilliant
red flower of the cactus, was the one pas.
sion of his thorny little life, would accept
his defeat with something shining in his
sightless eyes that ought to have brought
tears to her own, and go scuttling about
the floor sqealing worse than ever.
1t counted for little that the sud-stains
meant 40 much OF her mothers strength;
she only knew that she was spending her
youth with neither pleasure nor profit,
that Tins alteration was the torment OF
her life, and that Grandfather Mulanoy's
playing fast and loose with the proprietor
of the red lamp at one corner OF the alley
aud the savage at the other, getting his
drinks aud smoke free and welcome in
change for the hopes, so lavishly given
in pay, was nearly driving her frantic, as
il she would ever, ever
"Av' coorse not, jewel, chuckled the
dissipated old villain; "sure, it's choosin'
twixt the byes would splle me game in.
toirely."