te speech.

'So may it be,' chimed in the hag; 'and so with all who ill-treat those
whose bread they've eaten,' and she turned a glance of fiery anger on
the girl. 'What art doing there, old fool!' cried she to the Babbo,
who, having turned his back to the company, was telling over his beads
busily. He made no reply, and she went on: 'That's all he's good for
now. There was a time he could sing Punch's carnival from beginning to
end, keep four dancing on the stage, and two talking out of windows; but
now he's ever at the litanies: he'd rather talk to you about St. Francis
than of the Tombola, he would!'

As the old hag, with bitter words and savage energy, inveighed against
her old associate, Gerald had sense to mark that, small as the company
was, it yet consisted of ingredients that bore little resemblance, and
were attached by the slenderest sympathies to each other. He was young
and inexperienced enough in life to imagine that they who amuse the
world by their gifts, whatever they be, carry with them to their homes
the pleasant qualities which delight the audiences. He fancied that,
through all their poverty, the light-hearted gaiety that marked them in
public would abide with them when alone, and that the quips and jests
they bandied were but the outpourings of a ready wit always in exercise.

The Babbo had been a servitor of a convent in the Abruzzi, and,
dismissed for some misdemeanour, had wandered about the world in
vagabondage till he became a conjurer, some talent or long-neglected
gift of slight-of-hand coming to the rescue of his fortune. The woman,
Donna Gaetana, had passed through all the stages of 'Street Ballet,'
from the prodigy of six years old, with a wreath of violets on her
brow, to the besotted old beldame, whose specialty was the drum. As for
Marietta, where she came from, of what parentage, or even of what
land, I know not. The Babbo called her his niece--his grandchild--his
'figliuola' at times, but she was none of these. In the wayward turns
of their fortune these street performers are wont to join occasionally
together in the larger capitals, that by their number they may attract
more favourable audiences; and so, when Gerald first saw them at Rome,
they were united with some Pifferari from Sicily; but the same destiny
that decides more pretentious coalitions had separated theirs, and the
three were now trudging northward in some vague hope that the land of
promise lay in that direction. It