I found myself strangely embarrassed with the coarse guilt of intrusion.  I was suddenly oppressed with self-conscious awkwardness, wishing myself anywhere else, and not knowing what to do or say.  In all probability I looked haughty and disagreeable, though I felt humble as a worm.  How the Boy felt I have no means of knowing; I can only tell how he acted.  One would have thought that he had known these poor people all his life.  I lingered near the door, taking notes of the sad picture; the two rough wooden boxes, in which slept three little dark children, all apparently of exactly the same size; the mattress on the floor near by for the parents; the open door leading into a dark garret, where, no doubt, the grandmother crept to sleep; the shelves on the wall, bare save for a few dishes of peasant-made pottery; the pile of dried mud on the tiled floor, which the young mother had been carefully scraping with a knife from the little worn boots in her lap; the rickety, uncovered table, with a bunch of endives on a plate, and a candle guttering in a bottle.  This was the picture, redeemed from squalor only by the lithograph of the Virgin on the wall, draped with fresh wild flowers, and its perfect cleanliness; this was the home of the supposed “kidnapper,” the man who had refused to accept five thousand francs as a reward.

While I stood, stiff and uncomfortable, the Boy went forward quickly, begging the two women not to rise.  “Poor, dear little baby!” he said in Italian, looking down at the dark scrap of humanity in the grandmother’s arms.  “She is ill, isn’t she?”

Now, how did he know that the creature was a “she”?  If it were a guess, it was a lucky one, for both women replied together that the little girl had been ailing since yesterday.  They could not tell what was the matter.  They had hoped that she would be better to-day, but instead, she seemed worse; and with this, a glittering film which had been overspreading the mother’s eyes, suddenly dissolved into silently falling rain.  There were no sobs, no gaspings from this tired woman, too used to sorrow to rail against it, yet it was plain to see that her heart was breaking.  Still, life must go on:  and so, while she grieved for a little one she feared to lose, she cleaned the boots of those she hoped to keep.

“Have you called a doctor for her?” asked the Boy.

“The good priest is half a doctor.  He came to see the bambina.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, Signor, we cannot give her all the things he said she should have, nor can he help us to them, for he has much to do for others, and little to do it with.”

“Yet you would not let your husband take the reward I offered for finding my bag.  He is out of work, and you are poor; you have four children to feed, and one of them is ill.  Why will you not have the money?  I have come to ask you that.  You see, I want you to have it, for the bag is worth all I’ve offered and even more to me.”