ough Estelle had never met Dr. Tom Bewick before he came to New York
to see them off on their great four-stacked ocean-steamer.

"You see what I mean?" she asked, and, not expecting a regular answer,
did not wait for it. "Now that woman won't leave until she has secured
support for the mason's five children, and she'll do this without the
smallest difficulty. In a day or two some one else will come, with the
sad case of a poor father out of work who is going to have to sell his
blind daughter's canary unless Nell steps in to relieve their wants. And
Nell will step in. Word has been passed, just as they say a tramp at
home marks a house where he's been given a meal, and every case of want
in this town, it seems to me, is hopefully brought to Nell. And she
listens every time; she doesn't get sick of it. And you know, Doctor,
that her circumstances don't warrant it."

Bewick, as Estelle stopped for some comment on his side, made a slight
motion of chin and eyelids that partly or deprecatingly agreed with her.
He took the cigar out of his mouth, but having knocked the ash off,
replaced it, to listen further and not for the moment speak.

"It's positively funny, the things Nell has been doing with her money,"
Estelle went on, in a tone that did not disguise the fact of her
glorying in this prodigality while being justly frightened by it. "It's
not just the ordinary charities, churches, hospitals, etc.,--all of
those send in their regular bills, as you might say. It's a Swiss
music-box for the crippled son of the _spazzaturaio_, or
street-cleaner; it's a marriage-portion for this one and funeral
expenses for that one; it's filling the mendicant nuns' coal-cellar,
it's clothing a whole orphan-school in a cheerfuller color! Clotilde and
Italo call her attention to every deserving case, and are guided in this
by the simple knowledge that Nell can't hold on to her money. Of course
it's her good heart. She's done a lot for them and their family, too,
I've discovered. I don't know just how much, but I can guess by their
look of licking their chops. I'm not saying they aren't all
right--honest, sincere, and so forth--or that I don't like them. It's
Nell's own fault that she's imposed on. I don't doubt that they're as
devoted as they seem, it's only right they should be. It's right the
whole city of Florence should be. I was thinking only the other day as
we drove through Viale Lorenzo the Magnificent that it would be
appropriate f