I got up to put my threat into execution, when my eye was attracted by the musicians. There was a coarse, stout, sun-burned Irish woman, with an immense straw hat flapping over her freckled face, tied with a gaudy ribbon under her three chins, singing, "I'd be a butterfly!" At her side, stood a little girl about six years old, holding an inverted tambourine, to catch windfalls in the shape of pennies.
The little creature was as delicate as a rose leaf; her eyes were large and of a soft hazel; her skin fair and white, and her hair waved over her graceful little head as sweetly as your own. Her hands were small and white, and her coarse shoes could not hide her pretty little feet. She was not that woman's child; I was sure of if; for her voice was as sweet as a wind harp.
"How far have you come, to-day?" asked I of the Irish "butterfly."
"From the city, sure," said she; "would your leddyship give me a saxpence?"
I'd have given her five times that amount, if she wouldn't have sung to me again. So I tossed her the "saxpence," and asked if the child had walked from the city (four miles) too?
"Sure," said the woman, looking a little confused. "Biddy would be afther going with her mother wheriver she went."
Her mother? I didn't believe it. That child had been delicately brought up, as sure as my name was Fanny. All my motherly feelings were roused in an instant.
"If that is the case," said I, carelessly, "I suppose she is hungry, and her mother, too; if you will let her go down in the orchard with me, I will bring you back some nice ripe apples."
The little girl looked timidly at the woman, who took a good look at me out of her bold, saucy, black eyes, and asked, "Is it far you'll be going?"
"Just to yonder tree," said I, pointing down the meadow; "but if you think it will weary her to go, I will bring them to her myself."