hould you like to
see _your mother_ sit down on a door step, in the dark, dark night, and
droop her weary head upon her bosom and _die_?

Oh, Harry! all that had happened to the poor little boy and girl who
were eating raw potatoes at the hearth. They were poor little orphans,
and that old woman was their grandmother. They had all wandered about,
from place to place, ever since they left the ship that brought them
out.

They were pretty children, with great dark eyes, and curly hair, and
such a bright smile when we spoke kindly to them. Their grandmother was
all they had now to love; and she, poor woman, couldn't live long to
take care of them, for the cold, and exposure, and anxiety, had almost
killed her, too. So, she felt very anxious about what would become of
little Pietro and Annita, when she was dead; and she kept patting them
on the head, as if she was determined to make them as happy as possible
while she lived.

Well, do you know, Harry, it struck me that Mrs. ----, who lives in
New-York, might like to adopt the little orphans. She has no children
of her own, and she loves children. That's why I took her with me to
see the poor emigrants last night.

How she _did_ cry when she saw the poor things eating raw potatoes! She
turned round to me, and said, "Fanny, I must have those children. I'll
take them right home, and I'll ----" then she couldn't stop to tell me
the rest, but ran up to the grandmother, and asked her, in Italian, if
she might not have Pietro and Annita.

At first, the poor old grandmother looked at them both, and said she
couldn't give them up. Then she looked round that dismal room, and drew
her torn shawl up over her shoulders; and then she called them both to
her, and hugged and kissed them; and then, with the tears rolling down
her cheeks, she took them by the hand and led them up to Mrs. ----, and
told her to be "a kind mamma to them."

But poor little Pietro and Annita clung to their grandmother, and
kissed her wrinkled face, and hung round her neck, and hid their little
curly heads in her lap, for they had seen so many strange faces, and so
much misery, that it had made them as shy as little rabbits, and they
were afraid to venture away from grandmother. Mrs. ---- spoke to them
in Italian, and tried to coax them with promises of all sorts of pretty
things. But it was of no use; they only shook their little curly heads,
and ran back to their dear old grandma, who patted them both, an