Some hours later, when the police communicated with the Superintendent, and when he found that a woman had come to the door who said that she knew the waif, and had been sent away, he called the orderly who had been on duty several hard names in his heart for having followed the rule of the hospital so scrupulously.  He was an antediluvian, he was a case of arrested mental development, he was an ichthyosaurus, he was a new kind of idiot, he was a monumental fool, he was the mammoth ass reported to have been seen by a mediaeval traveller in the desert, that was forty cubits high, and whose braying was like the blast of ten thousand trumpets.  The Superintendent wished he had time to select more choice epithets for that excellent orderly, but the police seemed so particularly curious about the new patient that he had no leisure for thinking out what he wanted.

Nevertheless, the man had done his duty and nothing more nor less according to the rules, and Regina was forced to go away discomfited.

She walked a hundred yards or more down the hill, towards San Clemente, and then stood still to think.  The sun had risen, and Marcello was safe, though she could not see him.  That was something.  She stood there, young, strong, beautiful, and absolutely penniless; and Rome was before her.

For the first time since the previous evening she asked herself what was to become of her, and how she was to find bread for that day and for the next, and for all the days afterwards.  She would have robbed a church to feed Marcello, but she would sooner have lost her right hand than steal so much as a crust for herself.  As for begging, she was too proud, and besides, no one would have given her anything, for she was the picture of health, her rough clothes were whole and clean, she had tiny gold earrings in her ears, and the red and yellow cotton kerchief on her head was as good as new.  Nobody would believe that she was hungry.

Meanwhile Marcello was made comfortable in one of the narrow white beds of an airy ward in the San Giovanni hospital.  The institution is intended for women only, but there is now a ward for male patients, who are admitted when too ill to be taken farther.  The doctor on duty had written him down as much reduced by malarious fever and wandering in his mind, but added that he might live and get well.  It was wonderful, the doctor reflected for the thousandth time in his short experience, that humanity should bear so much as it daily did.

The visiting physician, who was a man of learning and reputation, came three hours later and examined Marcello with interest.  The boy had not suffered much by sleeping on the tail of the cart in the warm summer’s night, and was now greatly refreshed by the cleanliness and comparative luxury of his new surroundings.  He had no fever now and had slept quietly for two hours, but when he tried to remember what had happened to him, where he had been, and how