Carlin’s dove was a young woman with a sweet, motherly face, and, as she sang, she swung to and fro a hammock that was hung directly under the blue niche of the Virgin; and her eyes were raised from time to time to the statue or the crucifix, with an _Ave_ or a _Gesù mio_, or dropped to the baby she hushed to sleep with a word as tender. All the room seemed to swing with the hammock, as if it were in a tree-top; to float in an atmosphere of love and happiness with the mother and her child. Slowly the white lids of the little one dropped, like two rose-petals that cover two stars, and a dimpled hand clinging to the mother’s loosened its hold, as the angel of sleep unclasped it gently, finger by finger. Silence settled over the song, the hammock ceased to swing, and the mother, shining with love and happiness, bent over her sleeping babe, gazing at it as if her eyes were gifted to see through its white and rosy flesh, and behold the resting, folded soul hidden there like a sleeping butterfly in a shut flower. The Signora closed the slide as noiselessly as she had opened it, and the two, exchanging a smile of sympathetic pleasure, turned away from Carlin’s nest. The sculptor had made his sketch, and was just sending his model away. He turned immediately to his visitors, and began to show them his latest works, half a dozen things in clay, some finished, some requiring still a few touches. One group was especially pretty. It represented a family scene in one of the little Italian towns where all the business of life goes on in the street. On the rude stone steps outside a door sat a mother winding a skein of yarn held for her by a pretty girl of ten years or thereabouts, whose small arms were stretched to their utmost extent in the task. A little chubby boy leaned on the mother’s lap, and put up his finger to pull at the thread. At the front of the steps sat the father cobbling shoes. “I found that at Monte Compatri,” he said; “and the figures are all portraits. I was afraid I couldn’t do it, for it is better adapted for canvas than marble; but the walls hold them together, you see.” “We must go to Monte Compatri, Bianca,” the Signora said. “It’s one of the most primitive places in the world――a Ghetto perched on a mountain-top, as filthy and as picturesque as can be imagined. The air is delicious, the view superb, and the salads beggar description.” All Carlin’s best groups and figures were, like this, copies from nature. When he attempted anything else, he unconsciously copied the works of others or he failed. “I’m so glad you made that suggestion about the water-carrier,” he said, taking up his sketch. “I find it is always better for me to put considerable action into my figures. If I give them a simple _pose_, they are stupid. Would you have her looking up or down?”