p?-it is very good. Are you quite alone, this year?"

"Yes," I said, "quite alone."

I felt an increasing inclination to laugh, as my first disappointment was
dispelled by what Mother Rondoli said. I was obliged; however, to drink a
glass of her sirup.

"So you are quite alone?" she continued. "How sorry I am that Francesca
is not here now; she would have been company for you all the time you
stayed. It is not very amusing to go about all by oneself, and she will
be very sorry also."

Then, as I was getting up to go, she exclaimed:

"But would you not like Carlotta to go with you? She knows all the walks
very well. She is my second daughter, monsieur."

No doubt she took my look of surprise for consent, for she opened the
inner door and called out up the dark stairs which I could not see:

"Carlotta! Carlotta! make haste down, my dear child."

I tried to protest, but she would not listen.

"No; she will be very glad to go with you; she is very nice, and much
more cheerful than her sister, and she is a good girl, a very good girl,
whom I love very much."

In a few moments a tall, slender, dark girl appeared, her hair hanging
down, and her youthful figure showing unmistakably beneath an old dress
of her mother's.

The latter at once told her how matters stood.

"This is Francesca's Frenchman, you know, the one whom she knew last
year. He is quite alone, and has come to look for her, poor fellow; so I
told him that you would go with him to keep him company."

The girl looked at me with her handsome dark eyes, and said, smiling:

"I have no objection, if he wishes it"

I could not possibly refuse, and merely said:

"Of course, I shall be very glad of your company."

Her mother pushed her out. "Go and get dressed directly; put on your blue
dress and your hat with the flowers, and make haste."

As soon as she had left the room the old woman explained herself: "I have
two others, but they are much younger. It costs a lot of money to bring
up four children. Luckily the eldest is off my hands at present."

Then she told all about herself, about her husband, who had been an
employee on the railway, but who was dead, and she expatiated on the good
qualities of Carlotta, her second girl, who soon returned, dressed, as
her sister had been, in a striking, peculiar manner.

Her mother examined her from head to foot, and, after finding everything
right, she said:

"Now, my children, you can go." Then turning to