his fingers slipping over the keys were bringing forth
the most wonderful sounds. Ah, yes! Nina knew what music one could
make with one's fingers. Did not Telemacho play upon the harp? Did
not she herself accompany her own singing upon her fiddle,--her darling
fiddle, which she clasped lovingly beneath her arm and bravely tried to
shield from the weather? But surely, surely he could not be _playing_
that voice! Oh, no! it was the Santa Maria, and she was up in heaven
out of sight. It was only the sound of her singing that had come to
earth. Poor little Nina! She was so often disappointed that it was
not very hard to miss another joy. She must comfort herself by finding
a reason for it. If there was a reason, it was not so hard. Nina had
to think of a great many reasons. But nevertheless she could not
control one little sigh of regret. She would so much have liked to see
the Santa Maria. If she _had_ seen her, she thought she would have
asked her to give her a Christmas gift,--something she could always
keep, something that no one could take from her and that would never
spoil nor break. One had need of just such an indestructible
possession if one lived in the "Italian Quarter." Things got sadly
broken there. And--and--there were so few, so very few gifts. But it
was warm and dim and sweet in here,--a right good place in which to
rest when one was tired. She bent her head and leaned it against the
wooden back of the seat, and her eyes wandered first to one interesting
object and then to another,--to the tall windows, each of which was a
most beautiful picture, and all made of wonderfully colored glass; to
the frescoed walls garlanded with green and at last to the organ-loft
itself, in which was the solitary figure of the musician, seated before
that strange, many-keyed instrument of his, practising his Christmas
music.

He had lit the gas-jets at either side of the key-board, and they threw
quite a light upon him as he played, and upon the huge organ-pipes
above his head. Nina thought she had never seen anything as beautiful
as were their illuminated surfaces. She did not know what they were,
but that did not matter. She thought they looked very much like
exceedingly pointed slippers set upright upon their toes. She fancied
they were slippers belonging to the glorious angels who, Telemacho
said, always came to earth at Christmas-tide to sing heavenly anthems
for the Festa del Gesu Bambino, and t