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_ IT was April; and the bit of sky to be seen between two tall roofs,
from the window of Mrs. Ginniss's attic, had suddenly grown of a
deeper blue, and was sometimes crossed by a great white, glittering
cloud, such as is never seen in winter; and, when the window was
raised for a few moments, the air came in soft and mild, and with a
fresh smell to it, as if it had blown through budding trees and over
fresh-ploughed earth.
Cherry was now well enough to be dressed, and to play about the
room, or sew a little, or look at pictures in the gaudily painted
books Teddy anxiously saved his coppers to buy for her: but, more
than once in the day, she would push a chair to the bed, and climb
up to lie upon it; or would come and cling to her foster-mother,
moaning,--
"I'm tired now, mammy. Hold me in your lap."
And very seldom was the petition refused, although the wash-tub or
the ironing-table stood idle that it might be granted; for so well
had great-hearted Mrs. Ginniss come to love the child, that she
would have been as unwilling as Teddy himself to remember that she
had not always been her own.
Sitting thus in her mammy's lap one day, Cherry suddenly asked,--
"Where's the music, mammy?"
"The music, darlint? And what music do ye be manin'?"
"The music I heard one day before I went to heaven. Didn't you hear
it?"
"An' whin did ye go to hivin, ye quare child?"
"Oh! I don't know. When I came back, I was sick in the bed. I want
the music, mammy."
"It's Jovarny she manes, the little crather," said Mrs. Ginniss, and
promised, that if Cherry would lie on the bed, and let her "finish
ironing the lady's clothes all so pretty," she should hear the music
as soon as Teddy and the organ-grinder came home.
To this proposal, Cherry consented more willingly than her mammy had
dared to expect; and when, after finishing the ironing of some
intricate embroideries, the laundress turned to look, she found the
child had dropped quietly asleep.
"An' all the betther fur yees, darlint," said she. "Whin ye waken,
ye'll think no more uv the music that well-nigh kilt yees afore."
An hour later, Teddy's entrance aroused the sleeper, who, rolling
over upon the bed with a pretty little gape, smiled upon him,
saying,--
"Where's the music, Teddy? Mammy said you'd get it for me."
"It's Jovarny she's afther wantin' to hear play on his grind-orgin;
an' I towld her he'd coom whin yees did," explained Mrs. Ginniss:
and Teddy, delighted to be asked to do any thing for his little
sister, lost no time in running down stairs, and begging the
Italian, who had just returned home, to play one of the prettiest
tunes in his list, but on no account to touch the one that had so
strangely affected the little invalid upon a former occasion.
The Italian very willingly complied, and was already in the midst of
a pretty waltz when Teddy re-appeared in his mother's room. Cherry's
delight was unbounded; and when the whole list of tunes, with the
exception of the cachuca, had been exhausted, she put her arms round
Teddy's neck, and kissed him, saying,--
"Thank you, little brother. I'll eat my supper for you now."
And this, as Cherry had hardly been willing to eat any thing since
her illness, was considered, both by Teddy and herself, as a
remarkable proof of amiability and affection.
The next day, before Teddy went away in the morning, he was obliged
to promise that he would bring the music at night; and, as he ran
down stairs, he stopped to beg the organ-grinder to come home as
early as possible, and to come prepared to play for the little
sister's benefit.
"Let her come down and see the organ and Pantalon," said the Italian
in his broken English; and Teddy eagerly cried,--
"Oh! may she?" and ran up stairs again with the invitation. But Mrs.
Ginniss prudently declared that Cherry must not think of leaving her
own room at present, while the stairs and entries were so cold; and
"Thin agin," said she, "maybe the bit moonkey ud scare her back into
the fayver as bad as iver."
So, for a week or two longer, Cherry was obliged to content herself
with an evening-concert through the floor; and upon these concerts
the whole of the day seemed to depend. Very soon the little girl
began to have her favorites among the half-dozen airs she so often
heard, and, little by little, learned to hum them all, giving them
names of her own. "Kathleen Mavourneen" she always called "Susan,"
although quite unable to give any reason for so doing; and Teddy,
who watched her constantly, noticed that she always remained very
thoughtful, wearing a puzzled, anxious look, while hearing it. After
a time, however, this dim association with the almost-forgotten past
wore away; and although Cherry still called the air "Susan," and
liked it better than any of the rest, it seemed to have become a
thing of the present instead of the past.
At last, one warm day in April, when Giovanni had returned home
earlier than usual, and Teddy again brought an invitation to the
bamb¡na, as he called Cherry, to visit him, Mrs. Ginniss reluctantly
consented; and the little girl, wrapped in shawls and hood, with
warm stockings pulled over her shoes, was carried in Teddy's arms
down the stairs as she had been brought up in them six months
before. The boy himself was the first to think of it, and, as he
stooped to take the little figure in his arms, said,--
"You haven't been over the stairs, sissy, since Teddy brought you up
last fall."
"Teddy didn't bring me up. I never came up, 'cause I never was
down," said Cherry resolutely; and the boy, who dreaded above all
things to awaken in her mind any recollection of the past, said no
more, but carefully wrapping the shawl about her, and promising his
mother not to stay too long, carried her gently down the stairs, and
to the door Giovanni opened as he heard them approach.
"Welcome, little one!" said the Italian in his own language as they
entered; and Cherry smiled at the sound, and then looked troubled
and thoughtful.
The truth was, that 'Toinette's father and mother had often spoken
both Italian and French in her presence; and although the terrible
fever had destroyed her memory of home and parents, and all that
went before, the things that she had known in those forgotten days
still awoke in her heart a vague sense of pain and loss,--an effort
to recall something that seemed just vanishing away, as through the
strings of a broken and forsaken harp will sweep some vagrant
breeze, wakening the ghosts of its forgotten melodies to a brief and
shadowy life, again to pass and be forgotten.
So 'Toinette, still clinging to Teddy's neck, turned, and fixed her
great eyes upon the Italian's dark face so earnestly and so
piteously, that he smiled, showing all his white teeth, and asked,--
"Does the little one know the language of my country?"
"No: of course she don't. I don't," said Teddy, looking a little
anxiously into Cherry's face, and wondering in his own heart if she
might not have known Italian in that former life, of whose loves and
interests he had always been so jealous.
Giovanni looked curiously at the two children. Cherry, in recovering
from her illness, was regaining the wonderful beauty, that, for a
time, had seemed lost. The remnant of her golden hair spared by
Mother Winch's shears had fallen off after the first attack of
fever, and was now replaced by thick, short curls of a sunny brown,
clustering about her white forehead with a careless grace far more
bewitching than the elaborate ringlets Susan had been so proud of
manufacturing; while long confinement to the house had rendered the
delicate complexion so pearly in its whiteness, so exquisite in its
rose-tints, that one could hardly believe it possible that flesh and
blood should become so etherealized even while gaining health and
strength.
The subtle eye of the Italian marked every point of this exquisite
loveliness, ran admiringly over the outlines of the graceful figure,
the delicate hands and little feet, the classic curve of the lips,
the thin nostrils and tiny ears; then returned to the clear, full
eyes, with their pencilled brows and heavy lashes, and smiled at the
earnestness of the gaze that met his own. Then, from this lovely and
patrician face, the Italian's eyes wandered to Teddy's coarse and
unformed features, and figure of uncouth strength.
"Nightingales are not hatched from hens' eggs," muttered Giovanni in
his native tongue.
"Speak that some more; I like it," said Cherry softly.
"Yes; and you are like it, and, like all that belongs to my Italian,
beautiful and graceful," said Giovanni, dropping the liquid accents
as lovingly from his lips as if they had been a kiss. Then, in the
imperfect English he generally spoke, he asked of Teddy,--
"Where did the child come from?"
"She's my little sister," replied the boy doggedly.
The Italian shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows,
muttering in his own tongue,--
"I never heard or saw any child above there in the first weeks of my
living here. But what affair is it of mine? The child I have lost is
safe with the Holy Mother!"
He crossed himself, and muttered a prayer; then from behind the
stove, where he lay warming himself, pulled a little creature, at
sight of whom Cherry uttered a scream, and clung to Teddy.
"It's the monkey, sissy; it's Jovarny's monkey; and his name is
Pantaloons," explained Teddy.
"Pantalon," corrected the monkey's master; and snapping his fingers,
and whistling to the monkey, he called him to his shoulder, and made
him go through a number of tricks and gestures,--some of them so
droll, that Cherry's terror ended in peals of laughter; and she soon
left Teddy's side to run and caper about the room in imitation of
the monkey's antics.
"Does she dance, the little one?" asked Giovanni, watching the
child's lithe movements admiringly.
"Sure, and every step she takes is as good as dancing," said Teddy
evasively.
"Let us see, then."
And the Italian, arranging the stops of his organ, played the pretty
waltz Cherry had so often heard from it, and liked so well.
The child continued her frolicsome motions, unconsciously adapting
them to the music, until she was moving in perfect harmony with it,
although not in the step or figure of a waltz.
"She was born to dance!" exclaimed Giovanni with enthusiasm; and,
moving the stops of the organ, he passed, without pause, into the
gay and airy movement of the cachuca.
As the first tones struck the child's ear, she faltered; then
stopped, turned pale, and listened intently.
"Whisht! That's the tune I told you not to play!" exclaimed Teddy.
But Giovanni, his eyes fixed upon the child, did not hear or did not
heed him, but played on; while Cherry, trembling, pale, her hands
clasped, lips apart, and eyes fixed intently upon the musician,
seemed shaken to the very soul by some strange and undefined
emotion. Suddenly a scarlet flush mounted to the roots of her hair,
her eyes grew bright, her parted lips curved to a roguish smile;
and, pointing her little foot, she spun away in the graceful
movements of the dance, and continued it to the close, finishing
with a courtesy, and kiss of the hand, that made Giovanni drop the
handle of his organ, clasp his hands, and cry in Italian,--
"Bravo, bravo, picciola! Truly you were born to dance!"
But the child, suddenly losing the life and color that had sparkled
through every line of face and figure, ran with a wild cry to Teddy,
and, clasping him tight round the neck, burst into a flood of tears,
crying,--
"Take me home, Teddy!-quick, quick! I want mamma!"
Mrs. Ginniss had taught her to say "mammy;" and Teddy remembered
with dismay that she had never used the name "mamma," except in the
delirium of her fever, when she was evidently addressing some
distant and beloved object. But still he chose to understand the
appeal in his own way; and, hastily wrapping the shawls about the
little figure, he raised it in his arms, saying soothingly,--
"Come, then; come to mammy, little sister. You didn't ought to have
danced and get all tired."
"Good-by, little one," said Giovanni somewhat ruefully. The child
raised her head from Teddy's shoulder, and, smiling through her
tears, said sweetly,--
"Good-by, 'Varny. It wasn't you made me cry, but because"--
"'Cause you was tired, little sister," interposed Teddy hastily; and
Giovanni looked at him craftily.
"I'll come and see you another day, 'Varny; but I must go lie down
now," continued Cherry, anxious to remove any wound her new friend's
feelings might have received. And the organ-grinder smiled until he
showed all his white teeth, as he replied,--"Yes, and again and
again,--as often as you will, picciola."
But Teddy, shaking his head disapprovingly, muttered, as he carried
his little sister away,--
"No: it isn't good for you, sissy, to get so tired and worried." _
Read next: CHAPTER XV - THE PINK-SILK DRESS
Read previous: CHAPTER XIII - THE CACHUCA
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