But having entered with so fearless a front, the little woman drew up

suddenly at sight of the boy, and, entrenching herself behind the

doctor, began to swing by his coat-tails, and to take furtive glances at

the stranger in silence and aloofness.

"Bless their hearts! what funny things they are, to be sure," said the

mother. "Somebody seems to have been telling her she might have a

brother some day, and when nurse said to Susanna, 'The doctor has

brought a boy home with him to-night,' nothing was so sure as that this

was the brother they had promised her, and yet now ... Roma, you silly

child, why don't you come and speak to the poor boy who was nearly

frozen to death in the snow?"

But Roma's privateering fingers were now deep in her father's pocket, in

search of a specimen of the sugar-stick which seemed to live and grow

there. She found two sugar-sticks this time, and sight of a second

suggested a bold adventure. Sidling up toward the couch, but still

holding on to the doctor's coat-tails, like a craft that swings to

anchor, she tossed one of the sugar-sticks on to the floor at the boy's

side. The boy smiled and picked it up, and this being taken for

sufficient masculine response, the little daughter of Eve proceeded to

proper overtures.

"Oo a boy?"

The boy smiled again and assented.

"Oo me brodder?"

The boy's smile paled perceptibly.

"Oo lub me?"

The tide in the boy's eyes was rising rapidly.

"Oo lub me eber and eber?"

The tears were gathering fast, when the doctor, smoothing the boy's dark

curls again, said: "You have a little sister of your own far away in the Campagna

Romana--yes?"

"No, sir."

"Perhaps it's a brother?"

"I ... I have nobody," said the boy, and his voice broke on the last

word with a thud.

"You shall not go to the institution at all, David," said the doctor

softly.

"Doctor Roselli!" exclaimed his wife. But something in the doctor's face

smote her instantly and she said no more.

"Time for bed, baby."

But baby had many excuses. There were the sugar-sticks, and the pussy,

and the boy-brother, and finally her prayers to say.

"Say them here, then, sweetheart," said her mother, and with her cat

pinned up again under one arm and the sugar-stick held under the other,

kneeling face to the fire, but screwing her half-closed eyes at

intervals in the direction of the couch, the little maid put her little

waif-and-stray hands together and said: "Our Fader oo art in Heben, alud be dy name. Dy kingum tum. Dy will be

done on eard as it is in Heben. Gib us dis day our dayey bread, and

forgib us our trelspasses as we forgib dem dat trelspass ayenst us. And

lee us not into temstashuns, but deliber us from ebil ... for eber and

eber. Amen."




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