TEDDY GINNISS sat alone in his master's office, feeling very sad and forlorn: for Dr. Wentworth had that morning said that the chance of life for his little patient was very, very small; and it seemed to Teddy heavier news than human heart had ever borne before. His morning duties over, he had seated himself at his little table, and tried to study the lesson given him by Mr. Burroughs upon the previous day; but a heavy heart makes dim eyes, and the page where Teddy's were fixed seemed to him no better than a crowd of disjointed letters swimming in a blinding mist.
A hasty step was heard upon the stair; and, passing the sleeve of his jacket across his eyes, the boy bent closer over the book as his master entered the room.
"Any one been in this morning, Teddy?" asked Mr. Burroughs, passing into the inner office.
"No, sir."
"I am going out of town for a day or two, Teddy,—going to New York; and Mr. Barlow will be here to attend to the business. You will do whatever he wishes as you would for me. You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
The good-natured young man, struck by the mournful tone of Teddy's usually hearty voice, turned and looked sharply at him.
"Aren't you well, Teddy?"
"Yes sir, thank your honor."
"Not 'your honor' until I'm a judge, Teddy. But what's amiss with you, my boy?"
"I wouldn't be troubling your—you with it, sir. It's nothing as can be helped."
"No, no; but what is it, Teddy?" insisted the lawyer, who saw thatTeddy could hardly restrain his tears.
"Nothing, sir; but the little sister is mortal sick, and the doctor says he's afeard she won't stand it."
"Your little sister, Teddy?"
"Yes, sir."
"I didn't know you had one. You never spoke of her before, did you?"
"Maybe not, sir."
"What is the matter with her?"
"The faver, sir."
Mr. Burroughs knew that this phrase in an Irish mouth means but one disease, and replied, in a sympathizing voice,—
"Typhus! I'm sorry for you, Teddy, and sorry, too, for your mother, who is an excellent woman; but the little girl may yet recover: while there is life, there is hope, you know. Even if she dies, it is not so bad as—I am going to New York, Teddy, to look for a little cousin of mine whose parents do not know if she is living or dead, suffering or safe: that is worse than to have her ill, but under their care and protection, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir, perhaps. Is the little girl in New York, sir, do you think?"
"We hear of a child found astray there, who answers to the description; and I am going to see her before we mention the report to her mother. Have you never seen Mr. Legrange here, Teddy? It is his little girl. I wonder you haven't heard us talking of the matter."
"I don't mind the name, sir; and I haven't heard of the little girl before. Is she long lost?"
"Ten days yesterday. I have been busy all the week in the search for her. The clothes she had on when lost were found in a pawn-broker's shop; but we have no trace of her yet."
"What looking child was she, if you please, sir?" asked Teddy after a short pause, in which he seemed to study intently; while Mr. Burroughs went on glancing at the newspapers in his hand.
"'Toinette? Here is a description of her in 'The Journal,' and I have a photograph in my pocket-book. Here it is. It is well for you to study them both; for possibly you may discover her. I didn't think of it before; but you are just the boy to put upon the search. If you should find her, Teddy, Mr. Legrange will make your fortune. He is rich and generous, and this is his only child. Eleven o'clock. Shall be in at one."
As he spoke, Mr. Burroughs threw the paper and photograph uponTeddy's table, and hastily left the office. The boy took up "TheJournal," and read the following advertisement:—
"Lost, upon the evening of Oct. 31, a little girl, six years of age, named Antoinette Legrange; of slight figure, round face, delicate color, large blue eyes, long curled hair of a bright-yellow color, small mouth, and regular teeth. She was dressed, at the time of her disappearance, in a blue frock and brown boots, with a lady's breakfast-shawl; and wore upon the sleeve of her dress a bracelet of coral cameos engraved under the clasp with her name in full. A liberal reward will be paid for information concerning her. Apply at the police-station."
When he had studied this, Teddy took up the photograph, and examined it earnestly. The dress, the long curled hair, the joyous expression, were very different from the pale face, wild eyes, and cropped head of the little sister at home; but Teddy's heart sank within him as he traced the delicate features, the curved lips, and trim little figure. He dropped the picture, and, leaning his face upon his arm, sobbed aloud.
"I'll lose her anyway, if she dies or if she lives; and it's all the little sister ever I got."
But presently another thought made Teddy lift his head, and look anxiously about him to make sure that his emotion had not been seen by any one. He was still alone; and, with a sigh of relief, he dashed away the tears from his eyes, muttering,—
"It's the big fool I am, entirely! Sure and mightn't she have picked up the bracelet in the street, where maybe the little lady they've lost dropped it? And, if she looks like the picture, so does many a one beside; and it's no call I have to be troubling the master with telling him about her anyway. She's my own little sister, and I'll keep her to myself."
A sudden sharp recollection darted through the boy's mind, and he grew a little pale as he added,—
"Leastways, I'll keep her if God will let me; and sure isn't he stronger nor me? If it isn't for me to have her, can't he take her, if it's by death, or if it's by leading them that's searching for her to where she is? And more by token, that's the way I'll try it. If God means she shall stay and be my little sister, she'll live, and I'll take her, and say nothing to nobody about it: but, if it's displasin' to him, she'll die; and then I'll tell the master all about it, and he may do what he's a mind to with me. That's the way I'll fix it."
And Teddy, well satisfied with his own bad argument, took comfort, and went back to his books.
When Mr. Burroughs returned to the office, he was accompanied by Mr. Barlow, the gentleman who was to occupy it during his absence; and he did not speak to Teddy, except to give him a few directions, and bid him a kind good-by. The paper and picture he found lying upon his desk, and hastily put in his pocket without remark or question.
For the first time in his life, Teddy avoided meeting his master's eye, but watched him furtively over the top of his book, raising it so as to screen his face whenever Mr. Burroughs looked his way, and trembling whenever he spoke to him; and, for the first time in his life, he secretly rejoiced at seeing him leave the office, knowing that he was to be gone for some time.
The long day was over at last; and, so soon as the hour for closing the office had begun to strike, Teddy locked the door, sprang down stairs, and ran like a deer towards home, feeling as if in some manner the little sister was about to be taken away from him, and he must hasten to prevent it.
At the foot of the stairs, however, he checked himself, creeping up as silently and cautiously as possible, and stopping at the head to listen for the clear voice, frightfully clear and shrill, of the delirious child, which usually met him there. No sound was to be heard except the deep voice of the Italian organ-grinder in the room below, talking to himself or his monkey as he prepared supper; and Teddy, creeping along the entry to his mother's door, softly opened it, and went in.
At one side of the bed stood Mrs. Ginniss; at the other, Dr. Wentworth: but Teddy saw only the little waxen face upon the pillow between them,—the little face so strange and lovely now; for all the fever flush had passed away, the babbling lips were folded white and still, the glittering eyes were closed, and the long dark lashes lay motionless upon the cheek,—the little face so strange and terrible in its sudden, peaceful beauty.
As Teddy softly entered, Dr. Wentworth turned and held a warning finger up; then bent again above the little child, his hand upon her heart.
The boy crept close to his mother, down whose honest face the tears ran like rain; although she heeded the earnest warning of the physician, and was almost as still as she little form she watched.
"Is she dead, mother?" whispered Teddy.
"Whisht, darlint! wait till we know," whispered she in return; and the young doctor glanced impatiently at both out of his strained and eager eyes. Had it been his own and only child, he could not have hung more earnestly about her: and here was the strange, sweet charm of this little life,—that all who came within its influence felt themselves drawn toward it, and opened wide their hearts to allow its entrance; feeling not alone that they loved the lovely child, but that she was or should be their very own, to cherish and fondle and bind to them forever.
So the coarse, hard-working woman, who two weeks before had never seen her face, now wept as true and bitter tears as she had done beside the death-bed of the child she had lost when Teddy was a baby; and the young doctor, who had watched the passage of a hundred souls from time to eternity, hung over this little dying form as if all life for him were held within it, and to lose it were to lose all. And Teddy-ah! poor Teddy; for upon his young heart lay not only the bitterness of the death busy with his "little sister's" life, but the heavy burden of wrong and deception, and the proof, as he thought, of God's displeasure in taking from him at last what he had tried so hard to keep.
He sank upon his knees beside the bed, and hid his face, whispering,—
"O God! let her live, and I will give her back to them as I kept her from."
Over and over and over again, he whispered just these words, clinching tight his boy-hands to keep down the agony of the sacrifice; while in the very centre of his heart throbbed a hard, dull pain, that seemed as if it would rend it asunder.
His face was still hidden, when, like an answer to his petition, came the softest of whispers from the doctor's lips,—
"She will live, with God's help, and the best of care from you."
"An' it's the bist uv care she'll git, I'll pass me word for that," whispered back Teddy's mother, so earnestly, that the doctor answered,—
"Hush! She is falling asleep. Do not wake her, for her life!"
He sank into a chair as he spoke. Mrs. Ginniss crept round to the stove, and, crouching beside it, covered her head with her apron, and remained motionless. As for Teddy, he never stirred or looked up, but with his face hidden upon the bed, repeated again and again those words, to him so solemn and so full of meaning, until in the silence and the waiting he fell asleep, and gradually sank upon the floor.
And so the night went on: and the careful eyes of the young physician marked how a faint tinge of color crept into the death-white cheek upon the pillow; and how the still lips lost their hard, cold line, and grew human once more, though so pale; and how the eyelids stirred, moving the heavy lashes; and a faint pulse fluttered in the slender throat.
At last, with a long, soft sigh, the lips lightly parted; the eyelids opened slowly, showing for a moment the blue eyes, dim and languid, but no longer wild with delirium; and then they slowly closed, and the breath came softly and regularly from the parted lips.
Dr. Wentworth heaved an answering sigh of mingled weariness and relief, and, rising, went to Mrs. Ginniss's side, touching her upon the shoulder, and whispering,—
"She is doing well. Keep her as quiet as possible. I will be in at nine."
Hushing the murmured blessings she would have poured upon his head, the young man stole softly from the room and down the stairs into the street, where already the first gray of dawn struggled with the flaring gas-lights.
TEN days more, and beside the fire in Mrs. Ginniss's attic-room sat a little figure, propped in the wooden rocking-chair with pillows and comfortables; while upon a small stand close beside her were arranged a few cheap toys, a plate with some pieces of orange upon it, a sprig of geranium in a broken-nosed pitcher of water, and a cup of beef-tea.
But for none of these did the languid little invalid seem to care; and lying back in the chair, her head nestled into the pillow, her parched lips open, and her eyes half closed, she looked so little like the bright and glowing 'Toinette who had danced at her birthday-party not a month before, that it is a question if any one but her own mother would have believed her to be the same.
Mrs. Ginniss, hard at work upon the frills of a fashionable lady's skirt, paused every few moments to look over her shoulder at the little wasted face with the wistful look of some dumb creature who sees its offspring suffering, and cannot tell how to relieve it.
Suddenly setting the flat-iron she had just taken back upon the stove, the washwoman came and bent over the child, looking earnestly into her face.
"An' it's waker an' whiter she gits every day. Sure and I'm afther seeing the daylight through the little hands uv her; and her eyes is that big, they take the breath uv me whin I mate 'em. See, darlint!-see the purty skip-jack Teddy brought ye!"
She took from the table the toy she named, and, pulling the string, made the figure of the man vault over the top of the stick and back several times, crying at the same time,—
"Hi, thin!-hi, thin! See how the crather joomps, honey!"
But, although the languid eyes of the child followed her motions for a moment, no shadow of a smile stirred the parched lips; and presently the eyes closed, as if the effort were too much for them.
Mrs. Ginniss laid the toy upon the table, and took up the cup of beef-tea.
"Have a soop of yer dhrink, darlint?" said she, tenderly holding the cup to the child's lips, and raising her head with the other hand; but, with a moan of impatience or distress, the weary head turned itself upon the pillow, and the little wasted hand half rose to push away the cup.
"An' what is it I'll plaze ye wid, mavourneen? Do yees want Teddy to coom home?" asked the poor woman in despair.
A faint murmur of assent crept from between the parched lips; and the eyes, slowly opening, glanced toward the door.
"It's this minute he'll be here, thin," said the washwoman joyfully. "An' faith yees ought to love him, honey; for he'd give the two eyes out of his head to plaze yees, an' git down on his knees to thank yees for takin' 'em. Now, thin, don't ye hear his fut upon the stair?"
But the heavy steps coming up the stairs were not Teddy's, as his mother well knew; and although, when they stopped upon the landing below her own, she pretended to be much surprised, she would, in reality, have been much more so if they had not stopped.
"And it's Jovarny it wor that time, honey," said she soothingly: "but Teddy'll coom nixt; see if he doun't, Cherry darlint."
But Cherry, closing her eyes, with no effort at reply, lay as motionless upon her pillow as if she had been asleep or in a swoon.
Suddenly, from the room below, was heard a strain of plaintive music. The organ-grinder, for some reason or other, was trying his instrument in his own room; although, remembering the sick child above, he played as softly and slowly as he could. It was the first time he had done so since Cherry had been ill; and Mrs. Ginniss anxiously watched her face to see what effect the sounds would have.
The air was "Kathleen Mavourneen;" and, as one tender strain succeeded another, the watchful nurse could see a faint color stealing into the child's face, while from between the half-closed lids her eyes shone brighter than they had for many a day.
"If it plazes her, I'll pay him to grind away all day, the crather," murmured she joyfully.
The song ended, and, after a little pause, was succeeded by a lively dancing-tune.
"She'll not like that so well, thought Mrs. Ginniss; but, to her great astonishment, the child, after listening a moment, started upright in her chair, her eyes wide open and shining with excitement, her cheeks glowing, and her little hands fluttering.
"Mamma, mamma! I'm Cherritoe! and I can dance with that music, and mamma can play it more"—
The words faltered upon her lips, and she sank suddenly back upon the pillows in a death-faint. At the same moment, Teddy came bounding up the stairs and into the room.
"Go an' shtop that fool's noise if yees brain him, an' ax him what's the name o' that divil's jig he's playing!" exclaimed Mrs. Ginniss as she caught sight of the boy; and Teddy, without stopping for a question, hastily obeyed.
In a moment he was back.
"It's the cachuca, mother; but what's the matter with the little sister?"
"Whist! She's swounded wid the noise he's afther making," replied his mother angrily, as she laid the wasted little figure upon her bed, and bathed the temples with cold water.
Teddy stood anxiously looking on. Ever since the night when the little sister's fever had turned, and the doctor had promised that she should live, a struggle had been going on in the boy's heart. He could not but believe that God had given back the almost-departed life in answer to his earnest prayer and promise; and he had no intention of breaking the promise, or withholding the price he felt himself to have offered for that life. But, like many older and better taught persons, Teddy did not see clearly enough how little difference there is between doing right and failing to do right, or how much difference between promising with the lips and promising with the heart.
While his little sister, as he still called her, lay between life and death, Teddy said to himself that the excitement of seeing her friends might be fatal to her, and that, if she should die, their grief in this second loss would be greater than what they were now suffering.
When she began slowly to recover, he said that they would only be frightened at seeing her so wasted and weak, and that he would keep her until she had recovered something of her good looks; and, finally, he had begun to think that it would be no more than fair that he should repay himself for all the sorrow and anxiety her illness had given him by keeping her a little while after she was quite well and strong, and could go for a walk with him, and see the beautiful shops, with their Christmas-wares displayed.
"New Year's will be soon enough. I'll take her to the master for a New-Year's gift," Teddy had said to himself that very night as he came up the stairs; and a sort of satisfaction crept into his heart in thinking that he had at least fixed a date for fulfilling his promise.
But New-Year's Day found 'Toinette, or Cherry as we must learn to call her, more unlike her former self than she had been when he formed the resolution. The strange emotion that had overcome her in listening to the organ-grinder's music had caused a relapse into fever, followed by other troubles; and spite of Dr. Wentworth's constant care, Mrs. Ginniss's patient and tender nursing, and Teddy's devotion, the child seemed pining away without hope or remedy.
"I'll wait till the spring comes, anyway," said Teddy to himself."Maybe the warm weather will bring her round, and I'll hear herlaugh out once, and take her for just one walk on the Commons beforeI carry her to the master."
IT was April; and the bit of sky to be seen between two tall roofs, from the window of Mrs. Ginniss's attic, had suddenly grown of a deeper blue, and was sometimes crossed by a great white, glittering cloud, such as is never seen in winter; and, when the window was raised for a few moments, the air came in soft and mild, and with a fresh smell to it, as if it had blown through budding trees and over fresh-ploughed earth.
Cherry was now well enough to be dressed, and to play about the room, or sew a little, or look at pictures in the gaudily painted books Teddy anxiously saved his coppers to buy for her: but, more than once in the day, she would push a chair to the bed, and climb up to lie upon it; or would come and cling to her foster-mother, moaning,—
"I'm tired now, mammy. Hold me in your lap."
And very seldom was the petition refused, although the wash-tub or the ironing-table stood idle that it might be granted; for so well had great-hearted Mrs. Ginniss come to love the child, that she would have been as unwilling as Teddy himself to remember that she had not always been her own.
Sitting thus in her mammy's lap one day, Cherry suddenly asked,—
"Where's the music, mammy?"
"The music, darlint? And what music do ye be manin'?"
"The music I heard one day before I went to heaven. Didn't you hear it?"
"An' whin did ye go to hivin, ye quare child?"
"Oh! I don't know. When I came back, I was sick in the bed. I want the music, mammy."
"It's Jovarny she manes, the little crather," said Mrs. Ginniss, and promised, that if Cherry would lie on the bed, and let her "finish ironing the lady's clothes all so pretty," she should hear the music as soon as Teddy and the organ-grinder came home.
To this proposal, Cherry consented more willingly than her mammy had dared to expect; and when, after finishing the ironing of some intricate embroideries, the laundress turned to look, she found the child had dropped quietly asleep.
"An' all the betther fur yees, darlint," said she. "Whin ye waken, ye'll think no more uv the music that well-nigh kilt yees afore."
An hour later, Teddy's entrance aroused the sleeper, who, rolling over upon the bed with a pretty little gape, smiled upon him, saying,—
"Where's the music, Teddy? Mammy said you'd get it for me."
"It's Jovarny she's afther wantin' to hear play on his grind-orgin; an' I towld her he'd coom whin yees did," explained Mrs. Ginniss: and Teddy, delighted to be asked to do any thing for his little sister, lost no time in running down stairs, and begging the Italian, who had just returned home, to play one of the prettiest tunes in his list, but on no account to touch the one that had so strangely affected the little invalid upon a former occasion.
The Italian very willingly complied, and was already in the midst of a pretty waltz when Teddy re-appeared in his mother's room. Cherry's delight was unbounded; and when the whole list of tunes, with the exception of the cachuca, had been exhausted, she put her arms round Teddy's neck, and kissed him, saying,—
"Thank you, little brother. I'll eat my supper for you now."
And this, as Cherry had hardly been willing to eat any thing since her illness, was considered, both by Teddy and herself, as a remarkable proof of amiability and affection.
The next day, before Teddy went away in the morning, he was obliged to promise that he would bring the music at night; and, as he ran down stairs, he stopped to beg the organ-grinder to come home as early as possible, and to come prepared to play for the little sister's benefit.
"Let her come down and see the organ and Pantalon," said the Italian in his broken English; and Teddy eagerly cried,—
"Oh! may she?" and ran up stairs again with the invitation. But Mrs. Ginniss prudently declared that Cherry must not think of leaving her own room at present, while the stairs and entries were so cold; and "Thin agin," said she, "maybe the bit moonkey ud scare her back into the fayver as bad as iver."
So, for a week or two longer, Cherry was obliged to content herself with an evening-concert through the floor; and upon these concerts the whole of the day seemed to depend. Very soon the little girl began to have her favorites among the half-dozen airs she so often heard, and, little by little, learned to hum them all, giving them names of her own. "Kathleen Mavourneen" she always called "Susan," although quite unable to give any reason for so doing; and Teddy, who watched her constantly, noticed that she always remained very thoughtful, wearing a puzzled, anxious look, while hearing it. After a time, however, this dim association with the almost-forgotten past wore away; and although Cherry still called the air "Susan," and liked it better than any of the rest, it seemed to have become a thing of the present instead of the past.
At last, one warm day in April, when Giovanni had returned home earlier than usual, and Teddy again brought an invitation to the bamb¡na, as he called Cherry, to visit him, Mrs. Ginniss reluctantly consented; and the little girl, wrapped in shawls and hood, with warm stockings pulled over her shoes, was carried in Teddy's arms down the stairs as she had been brought up in them six months before. The boy himself was the first to think of it, and, as he stooped to take the little figure in his arms, said,—
"You haven't been over the stairs, sissy, since Teddy brought you up last fall."
"Teddy didn't bring me up. I never came up, 'cause I never was down," said Cherry resolutely; and the boy, who dreaded above all things to awaken in her mind any recollection of the past, said no more, but carefully wrapping the shawl about her, and promising his mother not to stay too long, carried her gently down the stairs, and to the door Giovanni opened as he heard them approach.
"Welcome, little one!" said the Italian in his own language as they entered; and Cherry smiled at the sound, and then looked troubled and thoughtful.
The truth was, that 'Toinette's father and mother had often spoken both Italian and French in her presence; and although the terrible fever had destroyed her memory of home and parents, and all that went before, the things that she had known in those forgotten days still awoke in her heart a vague sense of pain and loss,—an effort to recall something that seemed just vanishing away, as through the strings of a broken and forsaken harp will sweep some vagrant breeze, wakening the ghosts of its forgotten melodies to a brief and shadowy life, again to pass and be forgotten.
So 'Toinette, still clinging to Teddy's neck, turned, and fixed her great eyes upon the Italian's dark face so earnestly and so piteously, that he smiled, showing all his white teeth, and asked,—
"Does the little one know the language of my country?"
"No: of course she don't. I don't," said Teddy, looking a little anxiously into Cherry's face, and wondering in his own heart if she might not have known Italian in that former life, of whose loves and interests he had always been so jealous.
Giovanni looked curiously at the two children. Cherry, in recovering from her illness, was regaining the wonderful beauty, that, for a time, had seemed lost. The remnant of her golden hair spared by Mother Winch's shears had fallen off after the first attack of fever, and was now replaced by thick, short curls of a sunny brown, clustering about her white forehead with a careless grace far more bewitching than the elaborate ringlets Susan had been so proud of manufacturing; while long confinement to the house had rendered the delicate complexion so pearly in its whiteness, so exquisite in its rose-tints, that one could hardly believe it possible that flesh and blood should become so etherealized even while gaining health and strength.
The subtle eye of the Italian marked every point of this exquisite loveliness, ran admiringly over the outlines of the graceful figure, the delicate hands and little feet, the classic curve of the lips, the thin nostrils and tiny ears; then returned to the clear, full eyes, with their pencilled brows and heavy lashes, and smiled at the earnestness of the gaze that met his own. Then, from this lovely and patrician face, the Italian's eyes wandered to Teddy's coarse and unformed features, and figure of uncouth strength.
"Nightingales are not hatched from hens' eggs," muttered Giovanni in his native tongue.
"Speak that some more; I like it," said Cherry softly.
"Yes; and you are like it, and, like all that belongs to my Italian, beautiful and graceful," said Giovanni, dropping the liquid accents as lovingly from his lips as if they had been a kiss. Then, in the imperfect English he generally spoke, he asked of Teddy,—
"Where did the child come from?"
"She's my little sister," replied the boy doggedly.
The Italian shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows, muttering in his own tongue,—
"I never heard or saw any child above there in the first weeks of my living here. But what affair is it of mine? The child I have lost is safe with the Holy Mother!"
He crossed himself, and muttered a prayer; then from behind the stove, where he lay warming himself, pulled a little creature, at sight of whom Cherry uttered a scream, and clung to Teddy.
"It's the monkey, sissy; it's Jovarny's monkey; and his name isPantaloons," explained Teddy.
"Pantalon," corrected the monkey's master; and snapping his fingers, and whistling to the monkey, he called him to his shoulder, and made him go through a number of tricks and gestures,—some of them so droll, that Cherry's terror ended in peals of laughter; and she soon left Teddy's side to run and caper about the room in imitation of the monkey's antics.
"Does she dance, the little one?" asked Giovanni, watching the child's lithe movements admiringly.
"Sure, and every step she takes is as good as dancing," said Teddy evasively.
"Let us see, then."
And the Italian, arranging the stops of his organ, played the pretty waltz Cherry had so often heard from it, and liked so well.
The child continued her frolicsome motions, unconsciously adapting them to the music, until she was moving in perfect harmony with it, although not in the step or figure of a waltz.
"She was born to dance!" exclaimed Giovanni with enthusiasm; and, moving the stops of the organ, he passed, without pause, into the gay and airy movement of the cachuca.
As the first tones struck the child's ear, she faltered; then stopped, turned pale, and listened intently.
"Whisht! That's the tune I told you not to play!" exclaimed Teddy. But Giovanni, his eyes fixed upon the child, did not hear or did not heed him, but played on; while Cherry, trembling, pale, her hands clasped, lips apart, and eyes fixed intently upon the musician, seemed shaken to the very soul by some strange and undefined emotion. Suddenly a scarlet flush mounted to the roots of her hair, her eyes grew bright, her parted lips curved to a roguish smile; and, pointing her little foot, she spun away in the graceful movements of the dance, and continued it to the close, finishing with a courtesy, and kiss of the hand, that made Giovanni drop the handle of his organ, clasp his hands, and cry in Italian,—
"Bravo, bravo, picciola! Truly you were born to dance!"
But the child, suddenly losing the life and color that had sparkled through every line of face and figure, ran with a wild cry to Teddy, and, clasping him tight round the neck, burst into a flood of tears, crying,—
"Take me home, Teddy!-quick, quick! I want mamma!"
Mrs. Ginniss had taught her to say "mammy;" and Teddy remembered with dismay that she had never used the name "mamma," except in the delirium of her fever, when she was evidently addressing some distant and beloved object. But still he chose to understand the appeal in his own way; and, hastily wrapping the shawls about the little figure, he raised it in his arms, saying soothingly,—
"Come, then; come to mammy, little sister. You didn't ought to have danced and get all tired."
"Good-by, little one," said Giovanni somewhat ruefully. The child raised her head from Teddy's shoulder, and, smiling through her tears, said sweetly,—
"Good-by, 'Varny. It wasn't you made me cry, but because"—
"'Cause you was tired, little sister," interposed Teddy hastily; andGiovanni looked at him craftily.
"I'll come and see you another day, 'Varny; but I must go lie down now," continued Cherry, anxious to remove any wound her new friend's feelings might have received. And the organ-grinder smiled until he showed all his white teeth, as he replied,—"Yes, and again and again,—as often as you will, picciola."
But Teddy, shaking his head disapprovingly, muttered, as he carried his little sister away,—
"No: it isn't good for you, sissy, to get so tired and worried."
BUT, spite of Teddy's disapproval and his mother's doubts, neither of them could resist the earnestness of Cherry's entreaties, day after day, to be allowed to "go down and see the music in 'Varny's room;" and it finally became quite a regular thing for Teddy, upon his return home, to find his little sister ready shawled and hooded, and waiting for him to accompany her.
As the summer came on, and whole streets-full of his patrons left the city, Giovanni became less regular in his hours of leavings or returning home; often remaining in his room several hours of the day, smoking, sleeping, or training Pantalon in new accomplishments.
So sure as she knew him to be at home, Cherry gave her foster-mother no peace until she had consented to allow her to visit him; and Mrs. Ginniss said to herself, "Sure, and it's no harm the little crather can git uv man nor monkey nor music; an' what's the good uv crossin' her?"
So it finally came about that Cherry spent many more hours in the company of Giovanni, Pantalon, and the organ, than Teddy either knew, or would have liked, had his mother thought fit to tell him.
At first, the conversation between the new friends was carried on in the imperfect English used by both; but, very soon, Giovanni, noticing the facility with which the child adopted an occasional word of Italian, set himself to teach her the language, and succeeded beyond his expectations. Indeed it seemed to him that the soft and liquid accents of the beloved tongue had never sounded to him so sweet beneath Italian skies as now, when they fell from the rosy lips and pure tones of the charming child whom he, with all who approached her, was learning to love with the best love of his nature.
Besides the Italian lessons, Giovanni taught his little pupil to sing several of the popular songs of his native city of Naples, and to perform several of his national dances; watching with an ever-new delight the grace and ease of her movements, and the quickness with which she caught at his every hint and gesture.
Occasionally, Cherry insisted upon making Pantalon join in the dance; and the somewhat sombre face of the Italian would ripple all over with laughter as he watched her efforts to subdue the creature's motions to grace and harmony, and to cultivate in his bestial brain her own innate love of those divine gifts.
"You will never make him dance as if of heaven, as you do, picciola," said he one day; and Cherry suddenly stood still, and, dropping the monkey's paws, came to her teacher's side, asking eagerly,—
"Have you been to heaven too? and did you see me dance there?"
"Padre Johannes says we all came from heaven; so I suppose I did, and perhaps Pantalon also," said the Italian with a comical grimace: "but, if so, I have long forgotten what I saw there. Do you remember heaven, picciola?"
"Yes; I don't now," slowly replied the child with the weary and puzzled look she so often wore. "Sometimes I do. I used to dance; and mamma-that wasn't mammy-was there: but there was a naughty lady that slapped me; and there was a little man-why, it was Pantalon, wasn't it? Did Pantalon eat some cake that I-no, that some one gave him? Oh! I don't know; and I am so tired! I guess I'll go see mammy now, and lie down on the bed."
Giovanni did not try to detain the child, but, after closing the door behind her, remained looking at it as if he still saw the object of his thoughts, while an expression of perplexity and doubt clouded the careless good-humor of his face. Presently, however, it cleared; and, with a significant gesture of the head, he muttered,—
"What then? Is it my business or my fault? Come, Pantalon: we shall sup."
When Cherry appeared the next day in Giovanni's room, it was with as gay and untroubled a face as if no haunting memories had ever vexed her; and Giovanni, who liked her sunny mood much the best, was careful not to awaken any other. He played for her to dance; he sang with her; he told her stories of Italy, and the merry life he had lived there with his wife and child.
"And my little Julietta, like you, loved music and dancing, and sang like the angels," said he, smoothing Cherry's shining curls.
"Did she? Then she sings in heaven, and is happy: and by and by, when we go there, we'll see her; won't we?"
The Italian shook his head.
"You may, picciola; but the good God, if he takes me to heaven, must make me so changed, that Julietta could no longer know me, or I her. We men are not as little maidens."
Then, with a sudden change of mood, the Italian snatched from its case his cherished violin, and drew from it such joyous strains, that the child, clapping her hands, and skipping round the room, cried,—
"It laughs! the music laughs, and makes me laugh too! AndPantalon-see poor Pantalon try to laugh, and he can't!"
Giovanni stopped suddenly, and laid down his violin. A new thought, a sudden plan, had entered his head, and made his breath come quick, and his eyes grow bright. He looked attentively at the child for a moment, and then said,—
"Julietta used to wear such a beautiful dress, and go with me to the houses of rich people to dance; but you dance better than she did, picciola."
"Oh! let me go, and wear a beautiful dress. I don't like this dress a bit!" said Cherry, plucking nervously at the coarse and tawdry calico frock Mrs. Ginniss had thought it quite a triumph to obtain and to make up.
"I have saved two of Julietta's dresses for love of her. You shall see them," said the Italian; and from the box where he kept his clothes he presently brought a small bundle, and, unfolding it, shook out two little frocks,—one of pink silk, covered with spangles; the other a gay brocade, upon whose white ground tiny rosebuds were dotted in a graceful pattern. Some long silk stockings, and white satin boots with red heels, and blue tassels at the ankle, dropped from the bundle; and from one of the latter Giovanni drew a wreath of crushed and faded artificial roses.
"All these were given her by the beautiful marchsa for whom she was named. Many times we have been to play and dance before her pal zzo; and she, sending for us in, has given the little one a dress or a wreath, or a handful of confetti, or a silver-piece in her hand. It was when the marchsa died that our troubles began; and in three months more the little Julietta followed her, and Steph na (that was my wife) went from me, and—But see, picciola! is it not a pretty dress? Let us put it upon you, and it shall dance the Romaika with you as it once did with her."
Nothing loath, Cherry hastened, with the help of the Italian, to array herself in the pink-silk frock, and to exchange her coarse shoes for the silken hose and satin boots of the little lost Julietta. Although somewhat large, the clothes fitted better than those Cherry had taken off; and when, seizing the violin, Giovanni drew a long, warning note, the little dancer took her position, and pointed her tiny foot with so assured and graceful an air, that the Italian, nodding and smiling, cried with enthusiasm,—
"Ah, ah! See the little Taglioni! Why is she not upon the boards ofLa Sc la?"
What this might mean Cherry could not guess, nor greatly cared to know. She understood that her friend was pleased, and her little heart beat high with vanity and excitement. She danced as she had never danced before; and at the end, while Giovanni still applauded, and before she had regained her breath, the child was panting,—
"I want to go and dance for the rich ladies, like Julietta used to do, and wear her beautiful dresses, and have a wreath."
"Why not, then?" exclaimed the Italian eagerly. "Only you must never say so to the woman above there or the boy: they will not allow it."
"Won't mammy and Teddy like it? Then I can't go. Oh, dear! Why won't they like it, 'Varny?"
"Because they can't dance, and they don't want you to be different from them; and they will be afraid you will tire yourself. They don't know that it makes you well and happy to dance, and hear music, as it does me to make it. They are not like us, these people above there."
Cherry looked earnestly in his face, and her own suddenly flushed while she replied indignantly,—
"They're real good, 'Varny; and I love them same as I do you andPantalon. Don't you love them?"
"Oh! but I adore them, picciola; and I like well that you should place me and Pantalon beside them. But surely they do not dance, or love music, as we do."
Cherry shut tight her lips, and shook her head with an uneasy expression.
"Mammy says she don't believe they dance in heaven: and Teddy says it wasn't there I used to learn; for I never went anywhere but to mammy's room since I was borned."
"But they do dance in heaven, and sing, and listen to music; and it is because you came from heaven so little while ago that you remember, and they have forgotten," said Giovanni positively. "And it is right that you should love these things; and it is right that you should go with me, and say nothing to them till we come back. I will ask the good woman that I may take you for a walk in a day or two and I will carry the pretty dress and the violin; and, when we are away from the house, you shall put it on, and we will go and dance for the rich people a little while; and some one shall give you beautiful things, and much money, as they did Julietta; and then we will come home, and bring it all to the mammy, and she will be so happy, and see that it is a good thing, after all, to dance."
"Yes, yes; that will be splendid!" cried Cherry, clapping her hands and jumping up and down. "I will save every bit of the candy, and all the beautiful dresses, and the roses, and every thing, and bring them to mammy."
"And the money, that she may buy bread and clothes and wood, and not have to work so hard for them herself," suggested Giovanni artfully.
"Yes, Teddy gives her money; and she calls him her brave, good boy.So she'll call me too, pretty soon; won't she?"
"Truly will she; but remember always, picciola, that she nor Teddy must know any thing of this, or they will prevent it all. You won't tell them?"
"No; I won't tell," said Cherry, shuttling her lips very tight, and shaking her head a great many times. "Only we must go very quick, or else I might forget; and, when I opened my mouth, it might jump out before I knew."
"We will go to-morrow if it is fine," said Giovanni, after a moment of consideration; and Cherry, after changing her clothes, returned home so full of mystery and importance, that unless Mrs. Ginniss had been more than usually busy, and Teddy obliged to hurry with his supper and go directly out again, one or the other must have suspected that something very mysterious was working in the mind of their little pet.