As is usual in poor streets, there were swarms of children; and the appearance of little Amy with her long bright hair falling over her shoulders and Mabel clasped in her arms created a great sensation.
The children in the street shouted and exclaimed, and other children within the houses heard the sounds and came trooping out, while mothers and older sisters peeped from the doorways.
The very air seemed full of eager faces and little brown and curly heads bobbing up and down with excitement, and black eyes all fixed upon big beautiful Mabel, who with her thick wig of flaxen hair, her blue velvet dress and jacket, feathered hat, and little muff, seemed to them like some strange small marvel from another world.
They could not decide whether she was a living child or a make-believe one, and they dared not come near enough to find out; so they clustered at a little distance, pointed with their fingers, and whispered and giggled, while Amy, much pleased with the admiration shown for her darling, lifted Mabel up to view.
At last one droll little girl with a white cap on her round head seemed to make up her mind, and darting indoors returned with her doll,—a poor little image of wood, its only garment a coarse shirt of red cotton.
This she held out for Amy to see.
Amy smiled for the first time since her encounter with the bat-like friars; and Katy, taking Mabel from her, made signs that the two dolls should kiss each other.
But though the little Italian screamed with laughter at the idea of a bacio between two dolls, she would by no means allow it, and hid her treasure behind her back, blushing and giggling, and saying something very fast which none of them understood, while she waved two fingers at them with a curious gesture.
"I do believe she is afraid Mabel will cast the evil eye on her doll," said Katy at last, with a sudden understanding as to what this pantomime meant.
"Why, you silly thing!" cried the outraged Amy; "do you suppose for one moment that my child could hurt your dirty old dolly?
You ought to be glad to have her noticed at all by anybody that's clean."
The sound of the foreign tongue completed the discomfiture of the little Italian.
With a shriek she fled, and all the other children after her; pausing at a distance to look back at the alarming creatures who didn't speak the familiar language.
Katy, wishing to leave a pleasant impression, made Mabel kiss her waxen fingers toward them.
This sent the children off into another fit of laughter and chatter, and they followed our friends for quite a distance as they proceeded on their way to the hotel.
All that night, over a sea as smooth as glass, the
"Marco Polo" slipped along the coasts past which the ships of Ulysses sailed in those old legendary days which wear so charmed a light to our modern eyes.
Katy roused at three in the morning, and looking from her cabin window had a glimpse of an island, which her map showed her must be Elba, where that war-eagle Napoleon was chained for a while.
Then she fell asleep again, and when she roused in full daylight the steamer was off the coast of Ostia and nearing the mouth of the Tiber.
Dreamy mountain-shapes rose beyond the far-away Campagna, and every curve and indentation of the coast bore a name which recalled some interesting thing.
About eleven a dim-drawn bubble appeared on the horizon, which the captain assured them was the dome of St. Peter's, nearly thirty miles distant.
This was one of the "moments" which Clover had been fond of speculating about; and Katy, contrasting the real with the imaginary moment, could not help smiling.
Neither she nor Clover had ever supposed that her first glimpse of the great dome was to be so little impressive.
On and on they went till the air-hung bubble disappeared; and Amy, grown very tired of scenery with which she had no associations, and grown-up raptures which she did not comprehend, squeezed herself into the end of the long wooden settee on which Katy sat, and began to beg for another story concerning Violet and Emma.
"Just a little tiny CHAPTER, you know, Miss Katy, about what they did on New Year's Day or something.
It's so dull to keep sailing and sailing all day and have nothing to do, and it's ever so long since you told me anything about them, really and truly it is!"
Now, Violet and Emma, if the truth is to be told, had grown to be the bane of Katy's existence.
She had rung the changes on their uneventful adventures, and racked her brains to invent more and more details, till her imagination felt like a dry sponge from which every possible drop of moisture had been squeezed.
Amy was insatiable.
Her interest in the tale never flagged; and when her exhausted friend explained that she really could not think of another word to say on the subject, she would turn the tables by asking,
"Then, Miss Katy, mayn't I tell you a CHAPTER?" whereupon she would proceed somewhat in this fashion:—
"It was the day before Christmas—no, we won't have it the day before Christmas; it shall be three days before Thanksgiving.
Violet and Emma got up in the morning, and—well, they didn't do anything in particular that day.
They just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played and studied a little, and went to bed early, you know, and the next morning —well, there didn't much happen that day, either; they just had their breakfasts and dinners, and played."
Listening to Amy's stories was so much worse than telling them to her, that Katy in self-defence was driven to recommence her narrations, but she had grown to hate Violet and Emma with a deadly hatred.
So when Amy made this appeal on the steamer's deck, a sudden resolution took possession of her, and she decided to put an end to these dreadful children once for all.
"Yes, Amy," she said, "I will tell you one more story about Violet and Emma; but this is positively the last."
So Amy cuddled close to her friend, and listened with rapt attention as Katy told how on a certain day just before the New Year, Violet and Emma started by themselves in a little sleigh drawn by a pony, to carry to a poor woman who lived in a lonely house high up on a mountain slope a basket containing a turkey, a mould of cranberry jelly, a bunch of celery, and a mince-pie.
"They were so pleased at having all these nice things to take to poor widow Simpson and in thinking how glad she would be to see them," proceeded the naughty Katy, "that they never noticed how black the sky was getting to be, or how the wind howled through the bare boughs of the trees.
They had to go slowly, for the road was up hill all the way, and it was hard work for the poor pony.
But he was a stout little fellow, and tugged away up the slippery track, and Violet and Emma talked and laughed, and never thought what was going to happen.
Just half-way up the mountain there was a rocky cliff which overhung the road, and on this cliff grew an enormous hemlock tree.
The branches were loaded with snow, which made them much heavier than usual.
Just as the sleigh passed slowly underneath the cliff, a violent blast of wind blew up from the ravine, struck the hemlock and tore it out of the ground, roots and all.
It fell directly across the sleigh, and Violet and Emma and the pony and the basket with the turkey and the other things in it were all crushed as flat as pancakes!"
"Well," said Amy, as Katy stopped, "go on! what happened then?"
"Nothing happened then," replied Katy, in a tone of awful solemnity; "nothing could happen!
Violet and Emma were dead, the pony was dead, the things in the basket were broken all to little bits, and a great snowstorm began and covered them up, and no one knew where they were or what had become of them till the snow melted in the spring."
With a loud shriek Amy jumped up from the bench.
"No! no! no!" she cried; "they aren't dead!