ngry
now, as well as cold, and though there was not much rich food in the
Bend at any time, to-day he had had nothing of any quality to eat since
early morning. The man with the monkeys turned his head from time to
time, and spoke to him in a language that he could not understand;
although he saw that it was something amusing and well meant that the
man said, and so smiled back and nodded. He felt it to be quite a loss
when the man moved away.

Guido thought very slowly, but he at last began to feel a certain
contempt for the stiff statues and busts which no one wanted, and
buttoned the figure of the one of the woman with her arms held out,
inside of his jacket, and tucked his scarf in around it, so that it
might not be broken, and also that it might not bear the ignominy with
the others of being overlooked. Guido was a gentle, slow-thinking boy,
and could not have told you why he did this, but he knew that this
figure was of different clay from the others. He had seen it placed high
in the cathedrals at home, and he had been told that if you ask certain
things of it it will listen to you.

The women and children began to disappear from the crowd, and the
necessity of selling some of his wares impressed itself more urgently
upon him as the night grew darker and possible customers fewer. He
decided that he had taken up a bad position, and that instead of waiting
for customers to come to him, he ought to go seek for them. With this
purpose in his mind, he gathered the figures together upon his tray, and
resting it upon his shoulder, moved further along the street, to
Broadway, where the crowd was greater and the shops more brilliantly
lighted. He had good cause to be watchful, for the sidewalks were
slippery with ice, and the people rushed and hurried and brushed past
him without noticing the burden he carried on one shoulder. He wished
now that he knew some words of this new language, that he might call his
wares and challenge the notice of the passers-by, as did the other men
who shouted so continually and vehemently at the hurrying crowds. He did
not know what might happen if he failed to sell one of his statues; it
was a possibility so awful that he did not dare conceive of its
punishment. But he could do nothing, and so stood silent, dumbly
presenting his tray to the people near him.

His wanderings brought him to the corner of a street, and he started to
cross it, in the hope of better fortune in untried territor