A Bookful of Girls

It was our heroine’s first glimpse of Europe, and no delectable detail of their hour’s drive, no exotic bloom, no strange Moorish costume, no enchanting vista of cliff or sea, was lost upon her. Yet she felt that even her enthusiasm paled before the deep, speechless ecstasy of the little Cecilia. It was as if, in the tropical glow and fragrant warmth, the child were breathing her native air, – as if she had come to her own.

On their return, as the grimy old tug which had carried them across the harbour came alongside the big steamer, the child suddenly exclaimed, “Ecco, il Signore!” and, following the direction of her gesture, their eyes met those of the Count looking down upon them. He instantly moved away, and they had soon forgotten him, in the pleasurable excitement of bestowing upon Giuditta the huge, hat-shaped basket filled with fruit which they had brought for her.

Later in the day, as they weighed anchor and sailed out from the shadow of the great Rock, Blythe found herself standing with Mr. Grey at the stern-rail of their own deck, watching the face of the mighty cliff as it changed with the varying perspective.

“Oh! I wish I were a poet or an artist or something!” she cried.

“Would you take that monstrous fortress for a subject?” he asked.

“Yes, and I should do something so splendid with it that nobody would dare to be satirical!” and she glanced defiantly at her companion, whose good-humoured countenance was wrinkling with amusement.

“Let us see,” he said. “How would this do?” And he gravely repeated the following:

“There once was a fortress named Gib,

Whose manners were haughty and —

What rhymes with Gib?”

“Glib!” Blythe cried.

“Good!

Whose manners were haughty and glib.

If you tried to get in,

She replied with a grin, —

Quick! Give me another rhyme for Gib.”

“Rib!” Blythe suggested, audaciously.

“Excellent, excellent! Rib! Now, how does it go?

There once was a fortress named Gib,
Whose manners were haughty and glib!
If you tried to get in,
She replied, with a grin,
‘I’m Great Britain’s impregnable rib!’

Rather neat! Don’t you think?”

“O Mr. Grey!” Blythe cried. “You’ve got to write that in my voyage-book! It’s the–”

At that moment, a gesture from her companion caused her to turn and look behind her. There, only a few feet from where they were standing, but with his back to them, was the Count, sitting on one of the long, stationary benches fastened against the hatchway, while just at his knees stood little Cecilia. She was balancing herself with some difficulty on the gently swaying deck, holding out for his acceptance a small bunch of violets, which one of the market-women at Gibraltar had bestowed upon her.

As he appeared to hesitate: “Prendili!” she cried, with pretty wilfulness. Upon which he took the little offering, and lifted it to his face.

The child stood her ground resolutely, and presently, “Put me up!” she commanded, still in her own sweet tongue.

Obediently he lifted her, and placed her beside him on the seat, where she sat clinging with one little hand to the sleeve of his coat to keep from slipping down, with the gentle dip of the vessel.

The two sat, for a few minutes, quite silent, gazing off toward the African coast, and Blythe and her companion drew nearer, filled with curiosity as to the outcome of the interview.

Presently the child looked up into the Count’s face and inquired, with the pretty Tuscan accent which sounded like an echo of his own question on the evening of the dance:

“What is thy name?”

“Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia.”

Cecilia repeated after him the long, musical name, without missing a syllable, and with a certain approving inflection which evidently had an ingratiating effect upon the many-syllabled aristocrat; for he lifted his carefully gloved hand and passed it gently over the little head.

The child took the caress very naturally, and when, presently, the hand returned to the knee, she got possession of it, and began crossing the kid fingers one over the other, quite undisturbed by the fact that they invariably fell apart again as soon as she loosed her hold.

At this juncture the two eavesdroppers moved discreetly away, and Blythe, leaving her fellow-conspirator far behind, flew to her mother’s side, crying:

“O Mumsey! She’s simply winding him round her finger, and there’s nothing he won’t be ready to do for us now!”

“Yes, dear; I’m delighted to hear it,” Mrs. Halliday replied, with what Blythe was wont to call her “benignant and amused” expression. “And after a while you will tell me what you are talking about!”

But Blythe, nothing daunted, only appealed to Mr. Grey, who had just caught up with her.

“You agree with me, Mr. Grey; don’t you?” she insisted.

“Perfectly, and in every particular. Mrs. Halliday, your daughter and I have been eavesdropping, and we have come to confess.”

Whereupon Blythe dropped upon the foot of her mother’s chair, Mr. Grey established himself in the chair adjoining, and they gave their somewhat bewildered auditor the benefit of a few facts.

“I really believe,” the Englishman remarked, in conclusion, – “I really believe that haughty old dago can help us if anybody can. And when your engaging young protégée has completed her conquest, – to-morrow, it may be, or the day after, for she’s making quick work of it, – we’ll see what can be done with him.”

And, after all, what could have been more natural than the attraction which, from that time forth, manifested itself between the Count and his small countrywoman? If the little girl, in making her very marked advances, had been governed by the unwavering instinct which always guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception to his race.

The two would sit together by the hour, absorbed, neither in the lovely sights of this wonderful Mediterranean voyage, nor in the movements of those about them, but simply and solely in one another.

“She’s telling her own story better than we could do,” Mr. Grey used to say.

It was now no unusual thing to see the child established on the old gentleman’s knee, and once Blythe found her fast asleep in his arms. But it was not until the very last day of the voyage that the most wonderful thing of all occurred.

The sea was smooth as a lake, and all day they had been sailing the length of the Riviera. All day people had been giving names to the gleaming white points on the distant, dreamy shore, – Nice, Mentone, San Remo, – names fragrant with association even to the mind of the young traveller, who knew them only from books and letters.

Blythe and the little girl were sitting, somewhat apart from the others, on the long bench by the hatchway where Cecilia had first laid siege to the Count’s affections, and Blythe was allowing the child to look through the large end of her field-glass, – a source of endless entertainment to them both. Suddenly Cecilia gave a little shriek of delight at the way her good friend, Mr. Grey, dwindled into a pigmy; upon which the Count, attracted apparently by her voice, left his chair and came and sat down beside them.

As he lifted his hat, with a polite “Permetta, Signorina,” Blythe noticed, for the first time on the whole voyage, that he was without his gloves. Perhaps the general humanising of his attitude, through intercourse with the child, had caused him to relax this little point of punctilio.

Cecilia, meanwhile, had promptly climbed upon his knee, and now, laying hold of one of the ungloved hands, she began twisting a large seal ring which presented itself to her mind as a pleasing novelty. Presently her attention seemed arrested by the device of the seal, and she murmured softly, “Fideliter.”

Blythe might not have distinguished the word as being Latin rather than Italian, had she not been struck by the change of countenance in the wearer of the ring. He turned to her abruptly, and asked, in French: