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.”

“It’s Jovarny she’s afther wantin’ to hear play on his grind-orgin; an’ I towld her he’d coom whin yees did,” explained Mrs. Ginniss:  and Teddy, delighted to be asked to do any thing for his little sister, lost no time in running down stairs, and begging the Italian, who had just returned home, to play one of the prettiest tunes in his list, but on no account to touch the one that had so strangely affected the little invalid upon a former occasion.

The Italian very willingly complied, and was already in the midst of a pretty waltz when Teddy re-appeared in his mother’s room.  Cherry’s delight was unbounded; and when the whole list of tunes, with the exception of the cachuca, had been exhausted, she put her arms round Teddy’s neck, and kissed him, saying,—­

“Thank you, little brother.  I’ll eat my supper for you now.”

And this, as Cherry had hardly been willing to eat any thing since her illness, was considered, both by Teddy and herself, as a remarkable proof of amiability and affection.

The next day, before Teddy went away in the morning, he was obliged to promise that he would bring the music at night; and, as he ran down stairs, he stopped to beg the organ-grinder to come home as early as possible, and to come prepared to play for the little sister’s benefit.

“Let her come down and see the organ and Pantalon,” said the Italian in his broken English; and Teddy eagerly cried,—­

“Oh! may she?” and ran up stairs again with the invitation.  But Mrs. Ginniss prudently declared that Cherry must not think of leaving her own room at present, while the stairs and entries were so cold; and “Thin agin,” said she, “maybe the bit moonkey ud scare her back into the fayver as bad as iver.”

So, for a week or two longer, Cherry was obliged to content herself with an evening-concert through the floor; and upon these concerts the whole of the day seemed to depend.  Very soon the little girl began to have her favorites among the half-dozen airs she so often heard, and, little by little, learned to hum them all, giving them names of her own.  “Kathleen Mavourneen” she always called “Susan,” although quite unable to give any reason for so doing; and Teddy, who watched her constantly, noticed that she always remained very thoughtful, wearing a puzzled, anxious look, while hearing it.  After a time, however, this dim association with the almost-forgotten past wore away; and although Cherry still called the air “Susan,” and liked it better than any of the rest, it seemed to have become a thing of the present instead of the past.

At last, one warm day in April, when Giovanni had returned home earlier than usual, and Teddy again brought an invitation to the bamb¡na, as he called Cherry, to visit him, Mrs. Ginniss reluctantly consented; and the little girl, wrapped in shawls and hood, with warm stockings pulled over her shoes, was carried in Teddy’s arms down the stairs as she had been brought up in them six months before.  The boy himself was the first to think of it, and, as he stooped to take the little figure in his arms, said,—­