“You seem interested, ma’am, and I don’t mind telling you about her. I saw Lady Jane first some eight years ago. A man had her who used to go round with a hand-organ. She was such a pretty little creature that everybody gave her money, and she was a great profit to Jacopo, for that was his name.
“It used to make my heart ache to see the little beauty trudging round all day on her patient feet. When Jacopo spoke to her, I’ve seen her turn pale; and she never used to smile except when she was holding out her bit of a hat to people for money. She had to smile then; it was part of the business.
“I was sixteen, and I was all alone in the world. I had a room to myself, and I worked days in a toy-shop. I used to dress the dolls, and I got very clever at mending them; but I hadn’t thought of the hospital, then.
“I lived in the same street with Jacopo, and I grew very fond of the little lady, as the people in the street used to call Jane. Sometimes I coaxed Jacopo to let her stay with me at night; but after three or four times, he would not let her come again. I suppose he thought she would get too fond of me.
“Things went on that way for two years; then one night, in the middle of the night, a boy came for me, and said Jacopo was dying and wanted me to come. I knew it was something about Jane, and I hurried on my clothes and went.
“The child was asleep in one corner. She had been tramping all that day, as usual, and she was too tired out for the noise in the room to wake her. Jacopo looked very ill, and he could hardly summon strength to speak to me.
“‘The end has come sudden, Sally,’ he said, ‘the end to a bad life. But I ain’t bad enough to want harm to happen to the little one when I am gone. There will be plenty of folks after her, for she’s a profitable little one to have; but if you want her, I’ll give her to you. You may take her away to-night, if you will.’
“‘Indeed I will,’ I cried, ‘and thank you. While I can work, she shall never want.’
“Jacopo had been fumbling under his pillow as he spoke; and when I said I would take the child he handed me a curious locket. Maybe you noticed it at her neck when she stood in the door?
“He said, as nearly as I could understand, for it was getting hard work for him to speak, that he had stolen the child, but he had always kept this thing, which she had on her neck when he took her, and perhaps it would help, some day, to find her people.