"First the pretty red dress, carina." Shrewd Marta! She knew perhaps the one thing to make the child forget.
The tears were dried, and hand in hand they hurried to a shop. Pappina wanted everything she saw in the store that was bright and pretty.
"Mayn't I have that shawl for my head? Please, Marta, buy it for me!"
"No, carina—just the dress and shoes to–day. There is money only for them."
Pappina's request was hardly made before she had forgotten it because of the wonders she beheld in the great store—show–cases filled with ribbons of all the colors and tints of the rainbow; cases of spools of silk; bright–colored fashion plates, and a dazzling array of fabrics in prints, cheesecloth, merinos, and silks. With exclamations of delight the child danced about like a butterfly from one thing to another, smiling Marta following her.
When they started from the shop, Pappina refused to let Marta carry either the shoes or the dressgoods. She hugged them close in her arms, every other minute peeping through the tear she had made in the wrapping–paper.
"Che bella, Marta, che bella [How beautiful, Marta, how beautiful]!" she exclaimed softly, again and again.
"Are we going to make the dress right away, the minute we get home, Marta?"
"Si, si, carina."
"You will let me help?"