But New-Year’s Day found ’Toinette, or Cherry as we must learn to call her, more unlike her former self than she had been when he formed the resolution.  The strange emotion that had overcome her in listening to the organ-grinder’s music had caused a relapse into fever, followed by other troubles; and spite of Dr. Wentworth’s constant care, Mrs. Ginniss’s patient and tender nursing, and Teddy’s devotion, the child seemed pining away without hope or remedy.

“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.”