m. "I cannot
carry you. Come, then, you must toddle back by my side."

The parted lips remained motionless in awed silence, and one brown fist
still clutched the shirt with as much tenacity as ever; but the other
yielded itself quite willingly to the wonderful white hand, strong but
soft.

"You _have_ a mamma?" said Romola, as they set out, looking down at the
boy with a certain yearning. But he was mute. A girl under those
circumstances might perhaps have chirped abundantly; not so this
square-shouldered little man with the big cloud of curls.

He was awake to the first sign of his whereabout, however. At the
turning by the front of San Ambrogio he dragged Romola towards it,
looking up at her.

"Ah, that is the way home, is it?" she said, smiling at him. He only
thrust his head forward and pulled, as an admonition that they should go
faster.

There was still another turning that he had a decided opinion about, and
then Romola found herself in a short street leading to open garden
ground. It was in front of a house at the end of this street that the
little fellow paused, pulling her towards some stone stairs. He had
evidently no wish for her to loose his hand, and she would not have been
willing to leave him without being sure that she was delivering him to
his friends. They mounted the stairs, seeing but dimly in that sudden
withdrawal from the sunlight, till, at the final landing-place, an extra
stream of light came from an open doorway. Passing through a small
lobby, they came to another open door, and there Romola paused. Her
approach had not been heard.

On a low chair at the farther end of the room, opposite the light, sat
Tessa, with one hand on the edge of the cradle, and her head hanging a
little on one side, fast asleep. Near one of the windows, with her back
turned towards the door, sat Monna Lisa at her work of preparing salad,
in deaf unconsciousness. There was only an instant for Romola's eyes to
take in that still scene; for Lillo snatched his hand away from her and
ran up to his mother's side, not making any direct effort to wake her,
but only leaning his head back against her arm, and surveying Romola
seriously from that distance.

As Lillo pushed against her, Tessa opened her eyes, and looked up in
bewilderment; but her glance had no sooner rested on the figure at the
opposite doorway than she started up, blushed deeply, and began to
tremble a little, neither speaking nor moving f