Just then a bell rang out of a window above us, and the nurse got up and took the baby from me, saying:
“That is for me to bring him to his mother.”
After she had gone I picked up a rattle the baby had dropped to give it to some one. I could find no one about, and the idea came to me to keep it and take it to my Lady of the Fountain.
Two days later when I entered her apartment and presented it to her, saying it was a present I had brought her from the island, she took it and examined it with a puzzled expression. Being a European rattle she did not know what it was.
“What am I to do with it?” she asked.
“To play with it,” and seeing her more puzzled still I explained to her what it was, and how I had got it.
She patted it affectionately. “Pretty little toy!” she murmured; “pretty little toy! I believe it is warm yet from the baby touch.”
Our French lessons made great progress, and her preparations for Paris were completed. The scheme for obtaining a passport worked without a hitch, and word had come from the convent that the lady could be accommodated.
At last September was with us, and its coming that year was cold and dreary. The tramontana blew daily, the flowers lost their colour and perfume, and the grass turned pale. Already under the eaves one could hear the bustling swallows, and on a particularly cold day news came, somehow, that Nouri Pasha’s youngest wife was dead.