will not receive him. David Leone! Where have I heard that
name before, I wonder? Your father is a farmer?"

But the boy's face had clouded like a mirror that has been breathed
upon, and he made no answer.

"Isn't your father a farmer in the Campagna Romana, David?"

"I have no father," said the boy.

"Carino! But your mother is alive--yes?"

"I have no mother."

"Caro mio! Caro mio! You shall not go to the institution to-morrow, my
son," said the doctor, and then the mirror cleared in a moment as if the
sun had shone on it.

"Listen, father!"

Two little feet were drumming on the floor above.

"Baby hasn't gone to bed yet. She wouldn't sleep until she had seen the
boy, and I had to promise she might come down presently."

"Let her come down now," said the doctor.

The boy was supping a basin of broth when the door burst open with a
bang, and like a tiny cascade which leaps and bubbles in the sunlight, a
little maid of three, with violet eyes, golden complexion, and glossy
black hair, came bounding into the room. She was trailing behind her a
train of white nightdress, hobbling on the portion in front, and
carrying under her arm a cat, which, being held out by the neck, was
coiling its body and kicking its legs like a rabbit.

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 resp