He was back in Naples a few days later with a face deeply saddened by the suffering he had seen. "I could not do anything there," he told Mrs. Sprague, who was glad to see him safely back again; "but my friend, the naval officer, helped me to think of a way to be of service."
"I will help you. What are you going to do?" asked Edith. She had been busy every day, helping her mother collect food, clothing and medicine to send to Messina in the relief-ships; but she longed to do still more.
"I am going to make some tops," he told her. "I saw the king and queen doing with their own hands whatever needed to be done to help the poor people; and I can make tops and sell them. In that way I can raise a little money for the sufferers."
That was how it came about that, one evening a week later, a pair of picturesque peasants stood among the booths in the Circus Agonale, in Rome, selling tops. There were booths where peddlers sold whistles of every kind and description; but they two, Edith and Rafael, were the only peddlers of tops.
In all the din of the crowds that passed and re-passed, nothing attracted more attention and made more fun than the doll-tops which Edith and her mother had dressed for Rafael. Edith blew a great blast on her whistle, Rafael gave a piercing scream on his, and they had a little crowd of merry-makers around them in a moment.
Roman whistles are made of pewter, terra-cotta, or wood, in every shape of bird, or beast, or fish. Rafael had a bird-whistle, Edith's was a yellow butterfly, and the tops which they spun were dressed like dolls, in many fantastic costumes.
As he had said in Venice, so Rafael called to his audience in Rome, when he had a little space cleared for the performance, "Signor Rafael Valla will now present his troupe of trained tops!"
"It is for the earthquake sufferers," he had taught Edith to say in Italian, and she had no sooner said it than the tops were all as good as sold.
"It is a pity we had not time to make more," said Edith, when the last one was gone, and they were counting their gains in their room at the hotel.
"You would make a good business man, Rafael," she said suddenly. "The tops cost you only ten lire, and you have sold them for twenty times as much."