A Round Dozen

"Fiesole! Oh, mamma! just what we wanted so much!" cried Pauline. "Do let us go there!"

"Do, do!" chimed in Molly. "I saw the padrona's sister once, and she's so nice. Say yes, please, mamma."

The "yes" was not quite a happy one, but what could poor Mrs. Hale do? No better plan offered, time pressed, she hoped not to be obliged to stay long away from the children, and, as the signora said, the Fiesole hill-top must be airy and wholesome. So the arrangement was made, the terms settled, a carriage was called, and in what seemed to the girls a single moment, mamma had rattled away, with the signora to buy her ticket and see her off at the station. They looked at each other disconsolately, and their faces grew very long.

"We're just like orphans in a book," sobbed Pauline at last, while Molly watered Matilda's best frock with salt tears. The signora had a specially nice supper that night, and petted them a great deal, but they were very homesick for mamma, and cried themselves to sleep.

Matters seemed brighter when they woke up next morning to find a lovely day, such a day as only Italy knows, with sunshine like gold, sky of clearest blue, and the river valley shining through soft mists like finest filtered rainbows. By a happy chance the Fiesole sister-in-law came to Florence that morning, and drove up to the door in a droll little cart drawn by a mouse-colored mule, with a green carrot-top stuck over his left ear and a bell round his neck. She gladly agreed to lodge the children, and her pleasant old face and English voice made them at once at home with her. There was just room in the cart for their trunk, and about five in the afternoon they set out, perched on the narrow bench in front, one on each side of their new friend, and holding each other's hands tightly behind her ample back. Signora Bianchi was the sister-in-law's name, but "padrona" was easier to say, and they called her so from the beginning.

The hill-road was nowhere steep, but each winding turn took them higher and higher above Florence. They could see the curvings of the river, the bridges, the cathedral dome, and the tall, beautiful bell-tower, which they had been told was the work of the great artist Giotto. Further on, the road was shut in between stone walls. Over the tops of these hung rose-vines, full of fresh pink roses, though it was early March. Pauline and Molly screamed with pleasure, and the padrona, driving her mule close under the wall, dragged down a branch and let them gather the flowers for themselves, which was delightful. She would not stop, however, when, a little later, they came to fields gay with red and purple anemones, yellow tulips, and oddly colored wild lilies so dark as to be almost black; there were plenty of such on top of the hill, she said, and they must not be too late in getting home. The black lilies were giglios, – the emblem or badge of the city of Florence; the children had not seen them before, but they remembered the form of the flower in the carved shields over the door of some of the old buildings.

The road ended in a small paved piazza, which is the Italian name for an open square. All about it stood old buildings, houses and churches, and a very ancient cathedral with a dirty leather curtain hanging before its door. Passing these, the mule clattered down a narrow side-street, or rather lane. The streets in Florence had seemed dark and dirty; but what were they compared with this alley, in which the wheels of the little cart grazed the walls on either side as it passed along? Rickety flights of outside stairs led to the upper stories of the buildings; overhead, lines of linen, hung out to dry, were flapping in the wind. An ill-smelling stream of water trickled over the rough cobble-stone pavement. Jolt, jolt, jolt! – then the mule turned suddenly into a dark place which looked like a shabby stable-yard. It was the ground-floor of the padrona's house, and this was the place where Pauline and Molly were to stay! They looked at each other with dismayed faces.

But the padrona called them to follow, and led the way up one stone staircase after another till they came to the third story. Here things were pleasanter. It was plain and bare; the floors were of brick, there were no carpets, and the furniture was scanty and old, but the rooms were large and airy, and through the open casement bright rays of sunshine streamed in. Pauline ran to the window, and behold, instead of the dirty lane, she saw the open piazza, and beyond, a glimpse of the blue hills and the Florence valley! She called Molly, and, perched on the broad sill, they watched the sunset and chattered like happy birds, while the padrona bustled to and fro, preparing supper and spreading coarse clean linen on the beds of a little chamber which opened from the sitting-room. The padrona's kitchen was about the size of an American closet. The stove was a stone shelf with two holes in it, just big enough to contain a couple of quarts of charcoal. It was like a doll's kitchen, Molly thought; and Pauline stared when she saw the padrona produce a palm-leaf fan and begin to fan the fire, as if it were faint and needed to be revived. But as she gazed, the charcoal was coaxed into a glow, the little pots and pans bubbled, and hey, presto! supper was ready, with half the trouble and a quarter the fuel which would have been needed to set one of our big home ranges going. It was a queer supper, but very good, the children thought; their long drive had made them hungry, and the omelette, salad, and polenta, or fried mush, tasted delicious. Everything was nice but the bread, which was dark in color and had an unpleasant sour taste. The padrona smiled when she saw them put aside their untasted slices, and said that she too used to dislike Italian bread, but that now she preferred it to any other.

The padrona was delighted with her young visitors. She had long been a widow. One of her sons was in the army, and seldom at home; the other helped her about the house and tilled a little meadow which belonged to them. She had no daughter to keep her company, and the sweet, bright-faced American girls pleased her greatly. She helped the sisters to undress, and tucked them into their beds as kindly as any old nurse, and they fell asleep with her pleasant voice in their ears: "Good-night and good dreams, little miss."

The morrow brought another fine day, and the girls improved it for a ramble about the quaint town. It seemed to them the very oldest place they had ever seen – and, in fact, Fiesole is older far than Florence, of which it was first the cradle and afterward the foe. They stood a long time before the windows of the straw-shop, choosing the things they would like to buy if they had any money! Pauline fell in love with a straw parasol, and Molly hankered after a work-basket for mamma. Both of them felt that it was dreadful to be poor, but there was no help for it. Then they climbed to an upper terrace and sat a long time looking on the fine view it commanded, and talking in gestures to some brown little children who came up to beg from them. After that, they lifted the curtain over the cathedral door, and stole quietly about the ancient church. It was dark and shabby and worm-eaten; but as they wandered to and fro they came upon beautiful things, – tombs of sculptured marble with figures of saints and madonnas, wreaths of marble flowers, bits of old carved wood as black as ebony. It was strange to find such treasures hidden away in the dust and gloom, and to think that there they were, dusty and gloomy and old, before Columbus discovered the very new continent which we call America! A queer smell breathed about the place, a smell of must and age and dried-up incense. Pauline and Molly were glad to get away from it and feel the fresh air and the sunshine again. They rambled on to the western slope of the hill, and a little way down, where the land descends in terraces to the wooded valley below, they came upon the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre. They had never seen an amphitheatre before, but they guessed what it was from a picture which mamma had shown them. On the ledges which once were seats, where spectators seated in rows had watched the lions and the gladiators fight, crowds of purple violets now lifted their sweet faces to the sky.

After that, the amphitheatre became their favorite walk, and they went back every day. The padrona warned them against sitting long on the ground or staying out till the sunset dews fell, but they heeded what she said very little; it seemed impossible that so pleasant a spot could have any harm about it. But at last came a morning when Pauline recollected the padrona's warnings, with a great frightened heart-jump, for Molly waked up hot and thirsty, and, when she lifted her head from the pillow, let it fall back again, and complained of being dizzy. The padrona made her some tea, and after a while she felt better and got up. But all that day and the next she looked pale, and dragged one foot after the other as she went about, and the third day fever came upon her in good earnest. Tea did no good this time, and she lay still and heavy, with burning hands and flushed cheeks. The padrona tried various simple medicines, and Pauline sat all day bathing Molly's head and fanning her, but neither medicine nor fanning was of use; and as night came on, and the fever grew higher, Molly began to toss and call for mamma, and to cry out about her pillow, which was stuffed with wool and very hard.

"I don't like this pillow, Pauline – indeed I don't, it makes my neck ache so! Why don't you take it away, Pauline, and give me a nice soft pillow, such as we used to have at home? And I want some ice, and some good American water to drink. This water is bad. I can't drink it. Make the ice clink in the tumbler, please – because if I hear it clink I shan't be thirsty any more. And call mamma. I must see mamma. Mamma!"

And Molly tried to get up, and then tumbled back and fell into a doze, while poor Pauline sat beside her with a lump in her throat which seemed to grow worse every moment, and to bid fair to choke her entirely if it didn't stop. She did not dare to sob aloud, for fear of rousing Molly, but the tears ran quietly down her cheeks as she thought of home and mamma. Where was she? How was papa? Why didn't they write? And, oh dear! what should she, should she do, if Molly were to be very ill in that lonely place, where there was no doctor or any of the nice things which people in sickness need so much? No one can imagine how forlorn Pauline felt – that is, no one who has not tried the experiment of taking care of a sick friend in a foreign land, where the ways and customs are strange and uncomfortable, and the necessaries of good nursing cannot be had.

Nobody in the world could be kinder than was the padrona to her young invalid guest. Night after night she sat up, all day long she watched and nursed and cooked and comforted. Pauline clung to this friend in need as to the only helper left in the wide world. Beppo, the padrona's son, walked into Florence and brought out a little Italian doctor, who ordered beef-tea, horrified Pauline by a hint of bleeding, and left, promising to come again, which promise he didn't keep. Pauline was glad that he did not; she felt no confidence in the little doctor, and she knew, besides, that doctors cost money, and the small sum which mamma left was almost gone. Day after day passed, Molly growing no better, the padrona more anxious, Pauline more unhappy. It seemed as if years and years had gone by since mamma left them, – almost as if it were a dream that they ever had a mamma, or a home, or any of the happy things which now looked so sadly far away.

Then came the darkest day of all, when Molly lay so white and motionless that Pauline thought her dead; when the padrona sat for hours, putting a spoonful of something between the pale lips every little while, but never speaking, and the moments dragged along as though shod with lead. Morning grew to noon, noon faded into the dimness of twilight, still the white face on the pillow did not stir, and still the padrona sat silently and dropped in her spoonfuls. At last she stopped, laid down the spoon, bent over Molly, and listened. Was any breath at all coming from the quiet lips?

"Oh, padrona, is she dead?" sobbed Pauline, burying her face in the bedclothes.

"No, she is asleep," said the padrona. Then she hid her own face and said a prayer of thankfulness, while Pauline wept for joy, hushing herself as much as possible, that Molly might not be disturbed.

All that night and far into the morning the blessed sleep continued, and when Molly awoke the fever was gone. She was very white, and as weak as a baby; but Pauline and the padrona were happy again, for they knew that she was going to get well.

So another week crept by, each day bringing a little more strength and appetite to Molly, and a little more color to her pale face, and then the padrona thought she might venture to sit up. They propped her up in a big chair with many pillows ("brickbats" Molly called them), and had just pulled her across the room to the window, when a carriage rattled on the stones below, somebody ran upstairs, and into the room burst mamma! Yes, the little mamma herself, pale as Molly almost, from the fright she had gone through; but so overjoyed to see them, and so relieved at finding Molly up and getting well, that there was nothing for it but a hearty cry, in which all took part, and which did them all a great deal of good.

Then came explanations. Papa was a great deal better. The doctor thought the fever would do him good in the end rather than harm. But he was still weak, and mamma had left him to rest at the hotel in Florence while she flew up the hill to her children. Why didn't she write? She had written, again and again, but the letters had gone astray somehow, and none of the girls' notes had reached her except one from Molly, written just after they went to Fiesole. I may as well say now that all these missing letters followed them to America three months later, with a great deal of postage to be paid on them; but they were not of much use then, as you can imagine!

There was so much to say and to hear that it seemed as though they could never get through. Pauline held mamma's hand tight, and cried and laughed by turns.

"It was dreadful!" she said. "It was just exactly as if you and papa and everybody we knew were dead and we were left all alone. And I thought Molly would die too, and then what would have become of me? The padrona has been so kind – you can't think how kind. She sat up nine nights with Molly, and always said she wasn't tired; but I knew she was. I used to think it must be the nicest place in the world up here at Fiesole, but I never want to see it again in all my life."

"Don't say that, for Molly has got well here. And the good padrona too! You ought to love Fiesole for her sake."

"So I ought. And I do love her. But you'll not ever go away and leave us anywhere again, will you, mamma?"

"Not if I can help it," replied mamma, speaking over Molly's head, which was nestled comfortably on her shoulder. There were tears in her eyes as she spoke. It had not been possible to help it, but the tender mother's heart felt it a wrong to her children that they should have been without her in sickness.

It was another week before Molly could be moved. Mamma drove up twice during that time, bringing oranges and wine and all sorts of nice things, and the last time a parcel with a present in it for the children to give to the padrona. It was a pretty silk shawl and a small gold pin to fasten it. Pauline and Molly were enchanted to make this gift, and the padrona admired the shawl extremely; but Mrs. Hale sorrowfully longed to be richer, that she might heap many tokens of gratitude in the kind hands which had worked so lovingly for her little girls in their trouble.

"I can't bear to say good-bye," were Molly's last words as she leaned from the carriage for a parting hug. "Dear padrona, how I wish you would just come with us to America and live there. We would call you 'aunty' and love you so, and be so glad, you can't think! Do come!"

But the padrona, smiling and tearful, shook her head and declared that she could never leave her boys and the hill-top and old neighbors, but must stay in Fiesole as long as she lived. So with many kisses and blessings the good-byes were uttered, and out of the narrow street and across the piazza rattled the carriage, and so down the hill-road to Florence.

Pauline and Molly are safe in America now. They tell the girls at school a great deal about what they saw and where they went, but they don't talk much of the time of Molly's illness; and when Matilda Maria, who lives in a drawer now, entertains the other dolls with tales of travel, she skips that. It is still too fresh in their memories, and too sad, for them to like to speak of it. But sometimes, after they go to bed at night, they put their heads on the same pillow and whisper to each other about the old church, the amphitheatre, the padrona, those days of fever, and all the other things that happened to them when mamma went away and left them alone at Fiesole.

QUEEN BLOSSOM

PROMPTLY the bell tinkled for noon recess in the red school-house, and boys and girls came trooping out into the sunshine, which was warm as summer that day. Nobody stayed behind except Miss Sparks, the teacher. She turned the damper in the stove to make it warmer, and put on more wood; then took a roll of bread and butter and a large pickled cucumber out of her desk and sat down to lunch, and to read Young's "Night Thoughts," which somebody had told her was an "improving" book. The heat soon made her head ache, and "Night Thoughts" and the cucumber aiding, the children, had they only known it, were in a fair way to pass an extremely unpleasant afternoon.

Luckily they did not know it, otherwise the pleasure of the recess would have been spoiled, which would have been a pity, for the recess was very pleasant. There was the sun for one thing; and real, warm, yellow sun is a treat in April, not always to be had. There were the woods, beginning to be beautiful, although not a leaf-bud was yet visible. Spring was awake, and busy at her silent work, varnishing brown boughs to glossy brightness, tinting shoots and twigs with pink and yellow and soft red colors, arranging surprises everywhere. The children could not have put into words the feeling which made the day so delightful, but all were aware of it, and each, in his or her way, prepared to enjoy the hour. One tiny snow-drift remained in a leaf-strewn hollow. The boys found it out, and fell to snow-balling with the zest of those who do not hope to see snow again for many a long month. Big girls, with arms about each other's waists, walked to and fro, whispering together. The smaller children cuddled into a sunny fence corner, and, like Wordsworth's village maid,

"Took their little porringers,
And ate their dinners there."

A group of girls, not so big as those, nor so little as these, strolled off into the woods, talking as they went.

"Now you just hush up, Winnie Boker," said one. "It's no use, for we won't have her. She's been Queen ever so many times, and now it's somebody else's turn. There are other girls in town besides Blossom, I guess."

"Oh yes, Marianne; it isn't that," broke in Winnie, the words running out of her eager mouth so fast that they tumbled over each other. "It isn't that at all. You'd make a first-rate Queen, or so would Arabella or Eunice. But, don't you see, Blossom always was Queen, and now she's sick I'm afraid she'd feel badly if we chose somebody else."

"Dear me, what nonsense!" exclaimed Arabella, a tall girl in purple calico, with sharp black eyes and a Roman nose. "It wasn't fair a bit, ma says, to have Blossom always. Ma says other people have got rights too. You needn't be so fiery about that stuck-up Blossom, Winnie."

"Oh, I'm not," began Winnie, peaceably, "but – "

"My father says that Blossom is the prettiest girl in the whole township," broke in Charlie Starr, excitedly; "and it's real mean of you to call her stuck-up. Don't you recollect how sweet she looked last year in her white dress, and what a pretty speech she made when George Thorne put the crown on her head? She never said unkind things or called anybody names! She's always been May-Queen, and I say it's a shame to leave her out just because she's sick."

"You're a goose," responded Arabella. "Who wants a sick Queen of the May? She'll never be well again, the doctor says; and as for her beauty, that's gone for good. Ma declares that it's absurd to call her Blossom any more. It isn't her real name, only her pa named her so when she was little, because he was so proud of her looks. Her real name's Sarah Jane, and I'm going to call her Sarah Jane always. So there now, Charlotte Starr!"

"You bad girl!" cried Charlie, almost in tears. "How can you! Poor dear Blossom!"

"Stop quarrelling," said Laura Riggs, "and listen to my plan. Blossom can't be Queen, anyhow, don't you see, because she's too sick to come to the celebration. So what's the use of fighting about her?"

"I thought we could go to her, and put on the crown and all, and it would be such a surprise," ventured Winnie, timidly. "She'd be so pleased."

"I suppose she would," sneered Arabella, "only, you see, we don't mean to do it."

"I propose that we call all the boys and girls together after school, and vote who shall be Queen," went on Laura. "Then to-morrow we can go a flower-hunting, and have the wreath all ready for next day. It's splendid that May-day comes on Saturday this year."

"I know who I shall vote for, – and I, – and I," cried the children.

Winnie and Charlotte did not join in the cry. They moved a little way off, and looked sadly at each other. To them, poor Blossom, sick and neglected, seemed still the rightful Queen of the May.

"I've thought of a plan," whispered Charlie.

"What?"

But the answer was so softly spoken that nobody but Winnie could hear.