ght of his face, the aid of his strength, the
pleasure of his smile: Tasso must go! When Lolo understood the calamity
that had befallen them, he gathered Moufflou up against his breast, and
sat down too on the floor beside him and cried as if he would never stop
crying.

There was no help for it; it was one of those misfortunes which are, as
we say in Italian, like a tile tumbled on the head. The tile drops from
a height, and the poor head bows under the unseen blow. That is all.

"What is the use of that?" said the mother, passionately, when Lolo
showed her his five francs. "It will not buy Tasso's discharge."

Lolo felt that his mother was cruel and unjust, and crept to bed with
Moufflou. Moufflou always slept on Lolo's feet.

The next morning Lolo got up before sunrise, and he and Moufflou
accompanied Tasso to his work in the Cascine.

Lolo loved his brother, and clung to every moment whilst they could
still be together.

"Can nothing keep you, Tasso?" he said, despairingly, as they went down
the leafy aisles, whilst the Arno water was growing golden as the sun
rose.

Tasso sighed.

"Nothing, dear. Unless Gesu would send me a thousand francs to buy a
substitute."

And he knew he might as well have said, "If one could coin gold ducats
out of the sunbeams on Arno water."

Lolo was very sorrowful as he lay on the grass in the meadow where Tasso
was at work, and the poodle lay stretched beside him.

When Lolo went home to dinner (Tasso took his wrapped in a handkerchief)
he found his mother very agitated and excited. She was laughing one
moment, crying the next. She was passionate and peevish, tender and
jocose by turns; there was something forced and feverish about her which
the children felt but did not comprehend. She was a woman of not very
much intelligence, and she had a secret, and she carried it ill, and
knew not what to do with it; but they could not tell that. They only
felt a vague sense of disturbance and timidity at her unwonted manner.

The meal over (it was only bean-soup, and that is soon eaten), the
mother said sharply to Lolo, "Your aunt Anita wants you this afternoon.
She has to go out, and you are needed to stay with the children: be off
with you."

Lolo was an obedient child; he took his hat and jumped up as quickly as
his halting hip would let him. He called Moufflou, who was asleep.

"Leave the dog," said his mother, sharply. "'Nita will not have him
messing and carrying mud about