“I think,” continued Minima, with a shrewd expression on her face, which was beginning to fill up and grow round in its outlines, “I think, when you are quite well again, we’d better be going on somewhere to try our fortunes.  It never does, you know, to stop too long in the same place.  I’m quite sure we shall never meet the prince here, and I don’t think we shall find any treasure.  Besides, if we began to dig they’d all know, and want to go shares.  I shouldn’t mind going shares with Monsieur Laurentie, but I would not go shares with Pierre.  Of course when we’ve made our fortunes we’ll come back, and we’ll build Monsieur Laurentie a palace of marble, and put Turkey carpets on all the floors, and have fountains and statues, and all sorts of things, and give him a cook to cook splendid dinners.  But we wouldn’t stay here always if we were very, very rich; would you, Aunt Nelly?”

“Has anybody told you that I am rich?” I asked, with a passing feeling of vexation.

“Oh, no,” she said, laughing heartily, “I should know better than that.  You’re very poor, my darling auntie, but I love you all the same.  We shall be rich some day, of course.  It’s all coming right, by-and-by.”

Her hand was stroking my face, and I drew it to my lips and kissed it tenderly.  I had scarcely realized before what a change had come over my circumstances.

“But I am not poor any longer, my little girl,” I said; “I am rich now.”.

“Very rich?” she asked, eagerly.

“Very rich,” I repeated.

“And we shall never have to go walking, walking, till our feet are sore and tired?  And we shall not be hungry, and be afraid of spending our money?  And we shall buy new clothes as soon as the old ones are worn out?  O Aunt Nelly, is it true? is it quite true?”

“It is quite true, my poor Minima,” I answered.

She looked at me wistfully, with the color coming and going on her face.  Then she climbed up, and lay down beside me, with her arm over me and her face close to mine.

“O Aunt Nelly!” she cried, “if this had only come while my father was alive!”

“Minima,” I said, after her sobs and tears were ended, “you will always be my little girl.  You shall come and live with me wherever I live.”

“Of course,” she answered, with the simple trustfulness of a child, “we are going to live together till we die.  You won’t send me to school, will you?  You know what school is like now, and you wouldn’t like me to send you to school, would you?  If I were a rich, grown-up lady, and you were a little girl like me, I know what I should do.”

“What would you do?” I inquired, laughing.

“I should give you lots of dolls and things,” she said, quite seriously, her brows puckered with anxiety, “and I should let you have strawberry-jam every day, and I should make every thing as nice as possible.  Of course I should make you learn lessons, whether you liked it or not, but I should teach you myself, and then I should know nobody was unkind to you.  That’s what I should do, Aunt Nelly.”