n played in days she could still vividly remember; of the
aromatic scent of the burning heaps of sea-weed, whose smouldering
fires she used to fan; of the fresh, bracing sea-air, and dancing blue
waves with their snowy crests of foam, and the distant white sails
winging their way to some unknown haven.

Their talk always took a sadder tone when the Italian spoke of his
later life, and told how he left his quiet village, hoping to make his
fortune in the great world as a musician; how his hopes had been
gradually crushed down, and he wandered from place to place till he
emigrated to America, where the deadly cholera carried off his wife
and her infant boy, leaving him only his little daughter; how, since
then, dispirited and weary, he had managed to pick up a living as best
he could, gradually forsaking more ambitious instruments for his
barrel-organ, till the tide of life, gradually running low, was
reduced to its lowest ebb by the shock of his daughter's death,
superadded to the decline which had long been insidiously undermining
his system.

"But it will soon be over now, my child," he said,--"all the trouble
and the nursing. You have been very good to the poor _forestiere_
since the _povera_ went to the blessed saints. I shall soon see her
again, and Anita, and the little Giulio, in the better country that
the _signorina_ was reading about,--better, she says, than the
_patria_ itself, with its olives and vines. Ah! I think I see it
again, when I dream."

Such a speech as this always melted poor Nelly into tears; and, seeing
the pain it gave her, he did not often refer to his approaching death.
To Lucy, however, he sometimes spoke of his concern for the future lot
of his adopted daughter, who was again to be left desolate. Lucy
herself had been thinking a good deal about it, and wondering whether
she could induce her aunt to take Nelly. Amy, however, arranged the
matter unexpectedly. She had been asking Lucy, with great earnestness,
what poor Nelly would do when the organ-grinder should die; and when
Mrs. Brooke next came into the room, she surprised her with the
question, "Mamma, may Nelly come and live here when the organ-grinder
dies?"

Mrs. Brooke looked bewildered, until Lucy explained the matter. She
hesitated, and would have put Amy off with the promise that she "would
see about it." But Amy was so anxious to have the point settled, that
her mother at last gave the absolute promise she asked; and Lucy had