The times., 1898-04-17
MRS. KELLY5 PEODiGAL.

The Kellys commenced with a batter
ed up old grandfather. 7no possessed
a disastrous talent for getting into
trouble and staying there, and ended
with a baby named Tim. And the
baby was blind There was a widow
and some odds and ends Of children
wedged in between the two, and they
lived together in a rickety scrap Of a
house as like as peas to the rows of
other rickety scraps Of houses that dis
Eraced both sides of the street-only it
wasn't a street after all, but an alley in
Swampoodle. Ii was an alley choked
up with want and favored with babies
and sOapsuds. There was red lamp
swinging at one corner, where the sa-
loon stood, and a f-exterminated In
dian upheld with his one foot ithe
other might have been N the grave
for al the alley new the cigar store
interests at the other.
Grandfather Kelly owned a cow that
came as near hIs ideal as any COW
could that gave milk instead of whisky,
ana the family circle was further piec-
ed out by a dOmineckeT hen that
cackled a straight streak from dawn
to dusk; a gamb8ge cat with operate
aspirations, and q dismal cur that
whined
The Odds and Ends were fends of
assorted sizes, who had been branded
collectively as hely's cussed kids, un-
I'll Pat Kelly himself, poor fellow, fell
OF a scaIolding and broke his neck
After that the alleyites, who were hon
estly sympathetic and kind hearted,
dispensed with the adjective, though
they knew it 70 be more than ever de-
served
The widow Kelly was a work-rid-
den mother. who laundered her life
away with those same kids tugging at
her skirts-al that is, except Kitty,
who had FeVoited against maternal
apron strings from the day that she
went TO work behind the counter of
department store uptown.
Pretty Kitty Her eyes We're Irish
blue. her hair was Irish black, her
heart-5ut the alley folks said she had
none.
How she had managed to grow into
what she was under 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 glorious resurrection
in her face never puzzled the brain of
Miss Kelly. There We're the blue eyes
and black hair tantaiiZing her from her
AFTER
day. until her vanity bled at the pros
pect OF wasting such sweetness on two
old people and a gang of noisy cubs.
For Kitty had inherited one trait from
her disreputable old grandfather. She
called a spade a spade. 1t was no
crime, aurely, to rebel against a fate
that had cast her among alley folks
like q Jewel in a dust heap but even
if il had been Miss Kitty Kelly would
hell ul he
She loved her mother in a superior
sort Of fashion. but she considered she
had q right 10 be ashamed Of the toll
marred face and naked brogue. Other
girls al the store could haTetheir even
ings 10 themselves with a trip now and
then 10 the theater and friends they
We're not ashamed to own. She, Kitty
Kelly had TO urapse from Market Space
to bare floors and stained walls, TO
coarse food on cracked dishes, to hear
grandfather's moldy yarns about ould
Ireland when he knew she wanted peo-
pie 70 believe her American through
and through; TO the kids forever scuf-
fling. and last and worst Of all. to be
forever ciaWed at by that tiTes0me
Tim. She was tired out after her long
days work and ii was no fun having
10 kiss a baby whose face was seldom
clean and always spotty with bruises
from crawling against things that hurt
1t was Because she was really tired
that she SO often shook her skirts free
Of his clutch or tipped silently to an
other seat so that being blind he could
not stTaightway find her, and the child
whose love for his eldest sister, like the
brilliant red flower Of the cactus, was
the one beauty Of his thorny little life
would accept his defeat in any of the
various ways il came to him and would
crawl off with something shining in
his sightless eyes that ought TO have
brought tears to her own.
1t counted for little that the sad
stains meant SO much Of her mother s
strength, or that the Odds and Ends
ranked her next TO the smoky little
statue Of the Mother and Child on the
manteL She only knew that she was
spending her youth with neither pleas
ure nor profit to herself; that Tins
alteration was torment, and that her
grandfather's playing fast and loose
with the owners Of the red lamp and
the Indian, getting his toddy and to-
bacco free in exchange for the hopes
he SO lavishly gave them in pay, were
weIl-nigh driving her frantic-as if she
would ever look at either
Ay' Goose not, jewil,' chuckled the
old reprObate. sure, it's MARVIN
aither would spoil me game intoirly."
That settled it. For months she had
planned to get rid if it all, the poverty
and dirt and disgrace, and now her
grandfather had opened the way and
Kitty stalked out Of the old life white
with rage, and engaged board with her
friend at the lace counter, whose
mother kept a cheap pretentious house
uptown. OF course she told her mother
that she had to move nearer the store
or lose her place and, equally, Of course
the poor old soul implicitly believed her
But you'll be comm home over Sun
days, darlin'," she stipulated If it's
only to kape the baby from pinin'-"
Il viii when j can-but, indeed.
mother, you ought not to let Tim go on
like thaf'-with an impatient pull at
her skirt which Tim, as usual. had talk
en- in his vandal clutch. Il can't come
inside the door but what he wants to
stick 10 me like a burr-hateful little
thing"
Tim accepted his defeat with his
usual solemnity and crawled off into
oblivion, humping into jungle of table
legs on the way when Miss Kelly had
given her mother a duty kiss and had
administered a like dab on the cleanest
spots she could find on the faces of the
ODDS and Ends There was Tim back
again, pulling himself up by her skirt
until he stood erect with his tear
grined face beaming and with a wheed-
ling ring in his baby voice:
''Tiss Tim, tooi"
There Were no clean spots to choose
between, but Miss Kelly gave a
little peck at a bruise that showed the
least dirt and tripped out Of the chry-
sails Of her Swampoodle alley to com
mence q. butterfly existence in a cliFIdv