All I knew of her antecedents and life outside of these visits was what Luigi told me. She was born, he said, in the shipyards, and at the moment lived in the top of the rookery nearest the bridge. She had an only sister, who was ten years older; the mother was the wife of a crab fisherman who had died some years before; the two children and mother were cared for by a brother crab fisherman. His son Francesco, if report were true, was to marry the sister when she turned fifteen, Francesco being four years older. This last reference to Francesco came with a shake of the head and a certain expression in Luigi's eyes which told me at once that his opinion of the prospective groom was not for publication--a way he has when he dislikes somebody and is too polite to express it. "Fishes for crabs, like his father?" I asked. "Yes, crabs and young girls," he answered with a frown. "A poor lot, these crab catchers, Signore. Was it the charcoal or a brush you wanted?" Francesco did not interest me,--nor did the grownup sister; nor the mother, over whom Luigi also shrugged his shoulders. It was Loretta's chubbiness that delighted my soul. Even at five she was a delightful little body, and full of entrancing possibilities. One can always tell what the blossom will be from the bud. In her case, all the essentials of beauty were in evidence: dark, lustrous velvety eyes; dazzling teeth--not one missing; jet-black hair--and such a wealth of it, almost to her shoulders; a slender figure, small hands and feet; neat, well-turned ankles and wrists, and rounded plump arms above the elbows. "What do you intend to do, little one, when you grow up?" I asked her one morning. She was sitting beside me, her eyes following every movement of my brush. "Oh, what everybody does. I shall string beads and then when I get big like my sister I shall go to the priest and get married, and have a ring and new shoes and a beautiful, beautiful veil all over my hair." "So! And have you picked him out yet?" "Oh, no, Signore! Why, I am only a little girl. But he will surely come,--they always come."