So saying, Mrs. Ginniss closed the window, and, throwing a little shawl over her head, locked the door, leaving the key underneath, and hurried away to her sick friend, with whom she staid till nearly night. Giovanni and Cherry, meantime, walked gayly on, chatting, now of the wonderful things about them, now of the yet more wonderful scenes they were to visit. At a confectioner's shop, in a shady by-street, they stopped to rest for a while; and the Italian provided his little guest with ice-creams, cakes, and candies, to her heart's content. "I like these better than potatoes and pork-meat. I used to eat these in heaven," said the little girl, pausing to look at a macaroon, and then finishing it with a relish. The Italian laughed. "Canary-birds do not feed with crows," said he. "When we are rich, picciola, you shall never eat worse than this." "Shall we be rich soon, 'Varny?" asked the child eagerly. "Upon the moment almost, if you will dance and laugh, and look so pretty as you can, always." "But we needn't stop to be very rich before we go and carry some of the nice things to mammy," rejoined Cherry anxiously. "No, no, indeed! We will but make a little turn in the country, and come back princes. But mind you this, picciola: I am to be your father now, or all the same; and I shall tell every one that you are my own little girl: so you must never say, 'Not so.'" "But mammy said my father was dead, and Teddy said so too. He was Michael darlint." "I doubt not that Signor Michaelli died, and has gone to glory; but I strangely doubt if he were thy father, picciola," said the Italian with a grave smile. "However that may be, forget that you have ever had other father than me, and call me so always: 'Mio padre,' you must say, and no more 'Varny. Also, too, you must speak in Italian, as I shall to you; and never, as you do now, in English." "But mammy and Teddy don't know Italian," said Cherry, beginning to look a little troubled. "'In Rome, do as the Romans do.' When you are again with the woman and boy, speak as they speak: with me, speak as I speak." Giovanni said this more decidedly than he had ever spoken before, and Cherry looked quickly up at him. "Is that the way you talk because you want to make believe you are my father?" asked she. A sudden smile shot across the Italian's face, lighting its dark features like a gleam of sunshine sweeping across a pine-clad mountain-land. "Shame were it to me, dear little heart, if to be thy father were to make thee less happy than thou hast been with those others," said he softly in Italian, and using the form of address, which, in almost every language but the English, marks a different and more tender relation from that indicated by the more formal plural pronoun. "You will be happy with me if we do not soon revisit these people we leave behind?" asked he. The child's eyes grew large and deep as she fixed them upon his face, and presently asked,--