f my readers
unfamiliar with Italian names, had left the miserable home in Crosby
Street, where he and forty other boys lived in charge of a middle-aged
Italian, known as the padrone. Of this person, and the relations between
him and the boys, I shall hereafter speak. At present I propose to
accompany Phil.

Though he had wandered about, singing and playing, for two hours, Phil
had not yet received a penny. This made him somewhat uneasy, for he knew
that at night he must carry home a satisfactory sum to the padrone, or
he would be brutally beaten; and poor Phil knew from sad experience that
this hard taskmaster had no mercy in such cases.

The block in which he stood was adjacent to Fifth Avenue, and was lined
on either side with brown-stone houses. It was quiet, and but few passed
through it during the busy hours of the day. But Phil's hope was that
some money might be thrown him from a window of some of the fine houses
before which he played, but he seemed likely to be disappointed, for he
played ten minutes without apparently attracting any attention. He
was about to change his position, when the basement door of one of the
houses opened, and a servant came out, bareheaded, and approached him.
Phil regarded her with distrust, for he was often ordered away as a
nuisance. He stopped playing, and, hugging his violin closely, regarded
her watchfully.

"You're to come in," said the girl abruptly.

"Che cosa volete?"(1) said Phil, suspiciously.

(1) "What do you want?"

"I don't understand your Italian rubbish," said the girl. "You're to
come into the house."

In general, boys of Phil's class are slow in learning English. After
months, and even years sometimes, their knowledge is limited to a few
words or phrases. On the other hand, they pick up French readily, and as
many of them, en route for America, spend some weeks, or months, in the
French metropolis, it is common to find them able to speak the language
somewhat. Phil, however, was an exception, and could manage to speak
English a little, though not as well as he could understand it.

"What for I go?" he asked, a little distrustfully.

"My young master wants to hear you play on your fiddle," said the
servant. "He's sick, and can't come out."

"All right!" said Phil, using one of the first English phrases he had
caught. "I will go."

"Come along, then."

Phil followed his guide into the basement, thence up two flight of
stairs, and along a handsom