“But you are content here?” Betty managed to ask in intelligible Italian.
The shadow fell again over Natale’s face, and his figure visibly drooped. He did not pretend to answer her question.
“Oh, Aunty, let him go back to his people,” Betty pleaded, seeing the change. “Anybody can see that he is miserable. He is too little to be made to suffer.”
“He is too little to suffer long,” Mrs. Bishop replied calmly, with but one thought in her mind, of course.
“Poor little Egyptian!” sighed the gentleman. “He was born in Egypt, was he not, Miss Betty?”
“At Port Said, yes, and Pietro in Tunis they say.”
“Well, be a good boy, Natale,” said Mrs. Bishop, patting his head, in its new cap. “Then you will be happy. In a few days, I shall send for you to come to see me, and we will drink tea in the garden. Good-by! Addio!”
Natale touched his hat, as he had long ago been taught to do, and the pedestrians moved away, all but the gentleman who had called him a “little Egyptian.”
He stood for a moment at Natale’s side, with his back turned to the house and his departing friends, and in a trice a handful of copper coins was transferred from his pocket to Natale’s hands. Mr. Grantly had just had a paper note changed into small coins, at the fruit shop, and he was glad to relieve his pocket of some of its weight.
“I hope his guardians will let him keep the money,” was his thought as he turned away from Natale’s brilliant smile of thanks. The boy’s training had made him none too proud to accept the money of a stranger, and he lost no time in stowing it away in his jacket pocket, while Mr. Grantly hurried after the echoing steps of his party.