ce.

"Mother, what have you done with Moufflou, _my_ Moufflou?" said Lolo,
with a look that was almost stern on his ten-year-old face.

Then his mother, without looking up and moving her knitting-needles very
rapidly, said,--

"Moufflou is sold!"

And little Dina, who was a quick, pert child, cried, with a shrill
voice,--

"Mother has sold him for a thousand francs to the foreign gentleman."

"Sold him!"

Lolo grew white and grew cold as ice; he stammered, threw up his hands
over his head, gasped a little for breath, then fell down in a dead
swoon, his poor useless limb doubled under him.

When Tasso came home that sad night and found his little brother
shivering, moaning, and half delirious, and when he heard what had been
done, he was sorely grieved.

"Oh, mother, how could you do it?" he cried. "Poor, poor Moufflou! and
Lolo loves him so!"

"I have got the money," said his mother, feverishly, "and you will not
need to go for a soldier: we can buy your substitute. What is a poodle,
that you mourn about it? We can get another poodle for Lolo."

"Another will not be Moufflou," said Tasso, and yet was seized with such
a frantic happiness himself at the knowledge that he would not need go
to the army, that he too felt as if he were drunk on new wine, and had
not the heart to rebuke his mother.

"A thousand francs!" he muttered; "a thousand francs! _Dio mio!_ Who
could ever have fancied anybody would have given such a price for a
common white poodle? One would think the gentleman had bought the church
and the tabernacle!"

"Fools and their money are soon parted," said his mother, with cross
contempt.

It was true: she had sold Moufflou.

The English gentleman had called on her while Lolo and the dog had been
in the Cascine, and had said that he was desirous of buying the poodle,
which had so diverted his sick child that the little invalid would not
be comforted unless he possessed it. Now, at any other time the good
woman would have sturdily refused any idea of selling Moufflou; but that
morning the thousand francs which would buy Tasso's substitute were
forever in her mind and before her eyes. When she heard the foreigner
her heart gave a great leap, and her head swam giddily, and she thought,
in a spasm of longing--if she could get those thousand francs! But
though she was so dizzy and so upset she retained her grip on her native
Florentine shrewdness. She said nothing of her need of the money; not a