“Nightingales are not hatched from hens’ eggs,” muttered Giovanni in his native tongue.

“Speak that some more; I like it,” said Cherry softly.

“Yes; and you are like it, and, like all that belongs to my Italian, beautiful and graceful,” said Giovanni, dropping the liquid accents as lovingly from his lips as if they had been a kiss.  Then, in the imperfect English he generally spoke, he asked of Teddy,—­

“Where did the child come from?”

“She’s my little sister,” replied the boy doggedly.

The Italian shrugged his shoulders and raised his eyebrows, muttering in his own tongue,—­

“I never heard or saw any child above there in the first weeks of my living here.  But what affair is it of mine?  The child I have lost is safe with the Holy Mother!”

He crossed himself, and muttered a prayer; then from behind the stove, where he lay warming himself, pulled a little creature, at sight of whom Cherry uttered a scream, and clung to Teddy.

“It’s the monkey, sissy; it’s Jovarny’s monkey; and his name is Pantaloons,” explained Teddy.

“Pantalon,” corrected the monkey’s master; and snapping his fingers, and whistling to the monkey, he called him to his shoulder, and made him go through a number of tricks and gestures,—­some of them so droll, that Cherry’s terror ended in peals of laughter; and she soon left Teddy’s side to run and caper about the room in imitation of the monkey’s antics.

“Does she dance, the little one?” asked Giovanni, watching the child’s lithe movements admiringly.

“Sure, and every step she takes is as good as dancing,” said Teddy evasively.

“Let us see, then.”

And the Italian, arranging the stops of his organ, played the pretty waltz Cherry had so often heard from it, and liked so well.

The child continued her frolicsome motions, unconsciously adapting them to the music, until she was moving in perfect harmony with it, although not in the step or figure of a waltz.

“She was born to dance!” exclaimed Giovanni with enthusiasm; and, moving the stops of the organ, he passed, without pause, into the gay and airy movement of the cachuca.

As the first tones struck the child’s ear, she faltered; then stopped, turned pale, and listened intently.

“Whisht!  That’s the tune I told you not to play!” exclaimed Teddy.  But Giovanni, his eyes fixed upon the child, did not hear or did not heed him, but played on; while Cherry, trembling, pale, her hands clasped, lips apart, and eyes fixed intently upon the musician, seemed shaken to the very soul by some strange and undefined emotion.  Suddenly a scarlet flush mounted to the roots of her hair, her eyes grew bright, her parted lips curved to a roguish smile; and, pointing her little foot, she spun away in the graceful movements of the dance, and continued it to the close, finishing with a courtesy, and kiss of the hand, that made Giovanni drop the handle of his organ, clasp his hands, and cry in Italian,—­