"I'll wait till the spring comes, anyway," said Teddy to himself.
"Maybe the warm weather will bring her round, and I'll hear her
laugh out once, and take her for just one walk on the Commons before
I carry her to the master."
CHAPTER XIV.
GIOVANNI AND PANTALON.
IT was April; and the bit of sky to be seen between two tall roofs,
from the window of Mrs. Ginniss's attic, had suddenly grown of a
deeper blue, and was sometimes crossed by a great white, glittering
cloud, such as is never seen in winter; and, when the window was
raised for a few moments, the air came in soft and mild, and with a
fresh smell to it, as if it had blown through budding trees and over
fresh-ploughed earth.
Cherry was now well enough to be dressed, and to play about the
room, or sew a little, or look at pictures in the gaudily painted
books Teddy anxiously saved his coppers to buy for her: but, more
than once in the day, she would push a chair to the bed, and climb
up to lie upon it; or would come and cling to her foster-mother,
moaning,--
"I'm tired now, mammy. Hold me in your lap."
And very seldom was the petition refused, although the wash-tub or
the ironing-table stood idle that it might be granted; for so well
had great-hearted Mrs. Ginniss come to love the child, that she
would have been as unwilling as Teddy himself to remember that she
had not always been her own.
Sitting thus in her mammy's lap one day, Cherry suddenly asked,--
"Where's the music, mammy?"
"The music, darlint? And what music do ye be manin'?"
"The music I heard one day before I went to heaven. Didn't you hear
it?"
"An' whin did ye go to hivin, ye quare child?"
"Oh! I don't know. When I came back, I was sick in the bed. I want
the music, mammy."
"It's Jovarny she manes, the little crather," said Mrs. Ginniss, and
promised, that if Cherry would lie on the bed, and let her "finish
ironing the lady's clothes all so pretty," she should hear the music
as soon as Teddy and the organ-grinder came home.
To this proposal, Cherry consented more willingly than her mammy had
dared to expect; and when, after finishing the ironing of some
intricate embroideries, the laundress turned to look, she found the
child had dropped quietly asleep.
"An' all the betther fur yees, darlint," said she. "Whin ye waken,
ye'll think no more uv the music that well-nigh kilt yees afore."
An hour later, Teddy's entrance aroused the sleeper, who, rolling
over upon the bed with a pretty little gape, smiled upon him,
saying,--
"Where's the music, Teddy? Mammy said you'd get it for me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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