"What is an orphan? I want to be one, too," said Silvio.
"I am afraid my little boy is naughty to-night," Mrs. Menotti admonished him. "An orphan is one who has neither father nor mother, and no place that he can call home. Don't ever wish that again."
Mrs. Menotti did not notice Rico's pathetic glance when she gave Silvio the meaning of the word. Later when she saw that Rico was gone, she supposed that he had slipped away without saying good night, for the sake of keeping Silvio quiet, and she gave it no further thought.
"Now, Silvio," she said, as she sat down by his bed, "I want to tell you something, so that you will never make such a fuss again. We have no more right to take Rico away from those people than they would have to take you away from me. How should you like never to see the garden again?"
"I would come right home if they took me," was Silvio's valiant answer, but the illustration had served to quiet him, and he was soon tucked in his little bed and willing to go to sleep.
It would be hard to tell just what passed in Rico's mind when he quietly left the house that night and went down to the bridge. "I know now that I am an orphan," he murmured, "and that there is no place that I can call home." He longed to stay on the bridge all night, for its sweet association with the past was his only comfort, but he knew that the landlady would become alarmed at his absence, so he forced himself away to his cheerless attic.
He did not need a candle to find his way to the bed, and he much preferred not to see his surroundings. An eager desire to see Stineli possessed him. He meant to tell her how it comforted him to know that she cared for him. It was late in the night before he could quiet his thoughts for sleep.