ver and a day if a footman had not interfered.
Then Giusseppi passed his battered hat, and the audience, naturally
inferring that the black-eyed child belonged to the black-eyed musician,
threw him such encouragement as a week of ordinary days would not have
brought him.

[Illustration: Rosie threw herself into a very ecstasy of her art.]

In a reckless moment he gave Rosie a nickel, and this wealth, combined
with her recent danger and escape, and with the intoxicating quality of
her audience, made Rosie follow Giusseppi to the other end of the line
of carriages which trailed round the corner and half-way down the next
block. Here fresh triumphs awaited her, while from the steps of
Fraternity Hall her infant sister called aloud for instant speech with
her. The infant was still making these inarticulate demands, when Mrs.
Ponsonby-Brown, holding her skirts well above her shoe tops with one
hand, while with the other she applied a bottle of lavender salts to her
nose, approached the meeting. She was late but unflurried. Her
horses, somewhat racked by the elevated trains in Allen Street, had been
entirely unnerved by the children, the push-carts, the dogs, and the
flying papers, which beset them from all sides and sprang up under their
nervous feet. So the philanthropic Mrs. Ponsonby-Brown had alighted from
her carriage, secured a small though knowing-looking guide, and walked
to her destination. Presently she reached the hall, rewarded her guide,
and stopped in her surge up the steps by the yells of the youngest
Rashnowsky, which had broken free of its mummy clothes, and was battling
for breath with two arms like slate-pencils--as cold, as thin, as gray,
and seemingly as brittle.

"Whose child is this?" she demanded of a near and large chauffeur. It
was not the lady's fault that much philanthropic activity had so formed
her manner that these simple words, as she said them, seemed to infer
that the large green-clad chauffeur was a Rousseau among parents, that
the child was his, starved that he might grow fat, and abandoned that he
might go free. His reply was all that her manner demanded. And when she
repeated the question to other waiting men, she was hardly answered at
all.

Meanwhile the youngest Rashnowsky banged its hairless head upon the cold
stone, and reiterated its demands for its guardian sister. Mrs.
Ponsonby-Brown was puzzled, and she did not enjoy the sensation. She
picked up the child before she had plann