“But mammy said my father was dead, and Teddy said so too.  He was Michael darlint.”

“I doubt not that Signor Michaelli died, and has gone to glory; but I strangely doubt if he were thy father, picciola,” said the Italian with a grave smile.  “However that may be, forget that you have ever had other father than me, and call me so always:  ‘Mio padre,’ you must say, and no more ’Varny.  Also, too, you must speak in Italian, as I shall to you; and never, as you do now, in English.”

“But mammy and Teddy don’t know Italian,” said Cherry, beginning to look a little troubled.

“‘In Rome, do as the Romans do.’  When you are again with the woman and boy, speak as they speak:  with me, speak as I speak.”

Giovanni said this more decidedly than he had ever spoken before, and Cherry looked quickly up at him.

“Is that the way you talk because you want to make believe you are my father?” asked she.

A sudden smile shot across the Italian’s face, lighting its dark features like a gleam of sunshine sweeping across a pine-clad mountain-land.

“Shame were it to me, dear little heart, if to be thy father were to make thee less happy than thou hast been with those others,” said he softly in Italian, and using the form of address, which, in almost every language but the English, marks a different and more tender relation from that indicated by the more formal plural pronoun.

“You will be happy with me if we do not soon revisit these people we leave behind?” asked he.

The child’s eyes grew large and deep as she fixed them upon his face, and presently asked,—­

“Are you going with me to try to find heaven again?”

“Perhaps:  who knows, picciola?  The heaven you miss may come to you more easily if you go to seek it.  At any rate, I will carry thee no farther from it.  But come:  we must get to our journey.”

Leaving the confectioner’s shop, Giovanni lingered no longer in the gay streets, or even upon the fresh green grass of the Common, where Cherry would have staid to play all day.  Hurrying across it, and through some crowded streets, the Italian entered a large station-house, where stood the train of cars, already half filled with passengers; while the engine, puffing and panting with impatience, seemed unwilling to wait a moment longer.

Leaving Cherry in the ladies’ room, the Italian bought his tickets, and reclaimed from the baggage-room, where he had left it, his organ, with Pantalon chained to the top of it.  Then, calling the child, he hurried with her into the cars, and selected a seat behind the door, in the evident wish of being seen as little as possible.

“Now, then, Ciriegia mia, we go to seek our fortune,” said he, as the train left the station, and began to rush through the suburbs of the city, scattering little dirty children, vagrant dogs, leisurely pigs, and dawdling carriages driven by honest old ladies, from its track.