'll be sorry too,
won't we? For that will mean that the beautiful sheets and the soft
pillow will vanish the way they do in the fairy tales, and this lovely
garden will go too."

"But what if there were another one to take its place?" a voice
inquired from the doorway.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FAIRY GODFATHER

Lucia turned and looked up quickly. She was startled and not a little
embarrassed at having her confidence overheard.

Through the door that led from the ward the American was pushing a bed
on wheels. Lucia had seen that same bed many times before. It had
belonged to the old Mother Superior of the convent, and many a bright
morning she had seen it out in the garden as she sat at her desk in the
schoolroom above.

She looked at the white pillow half expecting to see the old wrinkled
face of Mother Cecelia, but instead Captain Riccardi looked up at her
and smiled.

"See, I've found you at last," he said, as Lathrop pushed the bed
beside Lucia's chair. "I was beginning to think that you were just a
dream child, and that I had imagined about the milk."

Lucia laughed gayly.

"No, Captain, that was not a dream, or I hope it wasn't, for if the
milk was not real then I dreamed about the pennies, and the sick
soldiers never got them."

"Sick soldiers! Did you give away the money?"

"Oh yes, sir, how could I keep it? I did not know you were a Captain,
I thought--"

"You thought I was just a poor soldier, eh?"

"Well, yes, if you will excuse me for saying so, I did, but anyway I
would not have kept the money."

"Why not?"

"How can you ask? Why because, to accept pay for something--and such a
little thing as a pail of milk--"

"Two pails."

"No, just one, they were only half-full, but no matter. I wanted to
give away the milk, not sell it, and so I put the pennies in the box at
church."

"And all the time I thought you were perhaps buying pretty ribbons with
it."

Captain Riccardi shook his head. "But I might have known better."

"Ribbons!" Lucia scorned the idea. "What do I need with such
foolishness, with a war going on just under my nose! I had other
things to think about, I can tell you, and other ways to spend my
pennies."

The Captain looked at her gravely. Then he took her hand and patted it
gently.

"You are a brave and true little Italian," he said, "and I can never
hope to pay you for what you have done. You will have to look for your
reward in your own heart. It ou