Master Luca Lomi asks where I
live, answer that you are ready to deliver a letter to me; but that you
are forbidden to enter into any particulars at first about who I am, or
where I live."

"Why am I forbidden?" inquired Nanina, innocently.

"Don't ask questions, baby! Do as you are told. Bring me back a nice
note or message to-morrow from the studio, and I will intercede with
this lady to get you some work. You are a foolish child to want it, when
you might make more money here and at Florence, by sitting to painters
and sculptors; though what they can see to paint or model in you I never
could understand."

"I like working at home better than going abroad to sit," said Nanina,
looking very much abashed as she faltered out the answer, and escaping
from the room with a terrified farewell obeisance, which was an
eccentric compound of a start, a bow, and a courtesy.

"That awkward child would be pretty," said Mademoiselle Virginie, making
rapid progress with the cutting-out of her dress, "if she knew how to
give herself a complexion, and had a presentable gown on her back. Who
is she?"

"The friend who is to get me into Master Luca Lomi's studio," replied
Brigida, laughing. "Rather a curious ally for me to take up with, isn't
she?"

"Where did you meet with her?"

"Here, to be sure; she hangs about this place for any plain work she can
get to do, and takes it home to the oddest little room in a street near
the Campo Santo. I had the curiosity to follow her one day, and knocked
at her door soon after she had gone in, as if I was a visitor. She
answered my knock in a great flurry and fright, as you may imagine. I
made myself agreeable, affected immense interest in her affairs, and so
got into her room. Such a place! A mere corner of it curtained off to
make a bedroom. One chair, one stool, one saucepan on the fire. Before
the hearth the most grotesquely hideous unshaven poodle-dog you ever
saw; and on the stool a fair little girl plaiting dinner-mats. Such was
the household--furniture and all included. 'Where is your father?' I
asked. 'He ran away and left us years ago,' answers my awkward little
friend who has just left the room, speaking in that simple way of hers,
with all the composure in the world. 'And your mother?'--'Dead.' She
went up to the little mat-plaiting girl as she gave that answer, and
began playing with her long flaxen hair. 'Your sister, I suppose,' said
I. 'What is her name?'--'They call me La B