“Never mind! Let me keep it! Oh, let me keep it! I beg of you to let me keep it, my aunt! Oh, it is so beautiful! It … it … brings back Poros to me,” and Mattina gulped down her sobs and dried her eyes on the back of her sleeve.
“Hush, now, I hear your uncle.”
He came in laughing, dressed in his Sunday best.
“Health to you, Mattina! You have been forgetting us for so long! And if you only knew where we are going! If you only but knew!”
And it is true they went to a wonderful place.
MATTINA SET TO WORK
In a broad street, up and down which the crowded street cars were constantly running, they stopped at an entrance where a man sat behind a tiny little window, and Mastro Anastasi paid some money to him. Then they passed into a great big dimly lighted room, with many seats all in a row placed from one end to another; and a great many people and children were sitting in them. Mattina sat between her aunt and her uncle, and waited.
“Why do we sit here?” she asked at last, “and why is it dark?”
Suddenly a little bell tinkled, and at one end of the hall it became light; and then all sorts of extraordinary things passed before Mattina’s eyes.