At last, one warm day in April, when Giovanni had returned home
earlier than usual, and Teddy again brought an invitation to the
bamb?na, as he called Cherry, to visit him, Mrs. Ginniss reluctantly
consented; and the little girl, wrapped in shawls and hood, with
warm stockings pulled over her shoes, was carried in Teddy's arms
down the stairs as she had been brought up in them six months
before. The boy himself was the first to think of it, and, as he
stooped to take the little figure in his arms, said,--
"You haven't been over the stairs, sissy, since Teddy brought you up
last fall."
"Teddy didn't bring me up. I never came up, 'cause I never was
down," said Cherry resolutely; and the boy, who dreaded above all
things to awaken in her mind any recollection of the past, said no
more, but carefully wrapping the shawl about her, and promising his
mother not to stay too long, carried her gently down the stairs, and
to the door Giovanni opened as he heard them approach.
"Welcome, little one!" said the Italian in his own language as they
entered; and Cherry smiled at the sound, and then looked troubled
and thoughtful.
The truth was, that 'Toinette's father and mother had often spoken
both Italian and French in her presence; and although the terrible
fever had destroyed her memory of home and parents, and all that
went before, the things that she had known in those forgotten days
still awoke in her heart a vague sense of pain and loss,--an effort
to recall something that seemed just vanishing away, as through the
strings of a broken and forsaken harp will sweep some vagrant
breeze, wakening the ghosts of its forgotten melodies to a brief and
shadowy life, again to pass and be forgotten.
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