good-sized building,
we were greeted by about forty children in pink-and-white gingham
aprons, and heads either shaved or finished off with tightly braided
pigtails. It seemed to me then that they were all smiling, and--for
they had been there some weeks--that most of them looked round and
healthy. But I soon found that some were still too languid to play.
One lying in a long chair on the terrace at the back of the house and
gazing vacantly out at the beautiful woods was tubercular, the victim
of months in a damp cellar. Another, although so excessively cheerful
that I suspect she was not "all there" was also confined to a long
chair, with a hip affection of some sort, but she was much petted, and
surrounded by all the little luxuries that the victims of her smile
had remembered to send her. One beautiful child had the rickets, and
several suffered from intestinal prolapsus and other internal
complaints, but were on the road to recovery.

While their Swedish nurse was putting them through their gymnastic
exercises I studied their faces. At first my impression was one of
prevailing homeliness; scrubbed, flat, peasant faces, for the most
part, without the features or the mental apparatus that provides
expression. But soon I singled out two or three pretty and engaging
children, and rarely one whose face was devoid of character. And they
stood well and went through their exercises with precision and vigor.

It was just before we left that my wandering attention was directed
toward the scene to which I alluded in my first paragraph. The greater
number of the children were shouting at play in a neighboring field.
The preternaturally happy invalid was smiling at the lovely woods
beyond the terrace, woods where little princes had frolicked, and
older princes had wooed and won. Mr. Jaccaci was still petting the
beautiful little boy who looked like the _bambino_ on the celebrated
fresco of Florence; Mrs. Hill was kissing and hugging several little
girls who had clung to her skirts. It was, in spite of its origin, a
happy scene.

I had been waiting by the door for these ceremonies of affection to
finish, when I happened to glance at the far end of the wide stone
terrace. There, by the balustrade, in the shadow of the leafy woods,
stood a girl of perhaps eight or ten. Her arms hung at her sides and
she was staring straight before her while she cried as I never have
seen a child cry; silently, bitterly, with her heavy plain face