them at the gentleman, and struck him with some of them.  He threw nine large potatoes!  I begged him to think of our dinner; but he cried “Yes! it is our dinner we give to your head, vagabond!” in his English.  I could not help running up to the gentleman to beg for his pardon.  He told me not to cry, and put some potatoes he had been picking up all into my hand.  They were muddy, but he wiped them first; and he said it was not the first time he had stood fire, and then said good-bye; and I slipped the potatoes into my pocket immediately, thankful that they were not wasted.  My father pulled me away roughly from the laughing and staring people on the bridge.  But I knew the potatoes were only bruised.  Even three potatoes will prevent you from starving.  They were very fine ones, for I always took care to buy them good.  When I reached home—­”

Wilfrid had risen, and was yawning with a desperate grimace.  He bade her continue, and pitched back heavily into his seat.

“When I reached home and could be alone with my mother, she told me my father had been out watching me the day before, and that he had filled his pockets that morning.  She thought he was going to walk out in the country and get people on the road to cook them for him.  That is what he has done when he was miserable,—­to make himself quite miserable, I think, for he loves streets best.  Guess my surprise!  My mother was making my head ache with her complaints, when, as I drew out the potatoes to show her we had some food, there was a purse at the bottom of my pocket,—­a beautiful green purse!  O that kind gentleman!  He must have put it in my hand with the potatoes that my father flung at him!  How I have cried to think that I may never sing to him my best to please him!  My mother and I opened the purse eagerly.  It had ten pounds in paper money, and five sovereigns, and silver,—­I think four shillings.  We determined to keep it a secret; and then we thought of the best way of spending it, and decided not to spend it all, but to keep some for when we wanted it dreadfully, and for a lesson or two for me now and then, and a music-score, and perhaps a good violin for my father, and new strings for him and me, and meat dinners now and then, and perhaps a day in the country:  for that was always one of my dreams as I watched the clouds flying over London.  They seemed to be always coming from happy places and going to happy places, never stopping where I was!  I cannot be sorrowful long.  You know that song of mine that you like so much—­my own composing?  It was a song about that kind gentleman.  I got words to suit it as well as I could, from a penny paper, but they don’t mean anything that I mean, and they are only words.”

She did not appear to hear the gallant cornet’s denial that he cared particularly for that song.

“What I meant was,—­that gentleman speaks—­I have fought for Italy; I am an English hero and have fought for Italy, because of an Italian child; but now I am wounded and a prisoner.  When you shoot me, cruel Austrians, I shall hear her voice and think of nothing else, so you cannot hurt me.”