Perhaps she had sung it over ten or twelve times when her wish materialized from behind the broad chimney at the rear. She heard his footfall first and then her sweet, wondering eyes beheld the visitor, a shabby, clean, and marvelous boy, some years her elder and about twice her size. Nevertheless, with the superiority of sex she immediately addressed him as “Little Boy.”
“Little Boy, where did you come from?”
“Up there,” replied her caller, pointing.
The caged one turned her solemn regard “up there” and saw a great, white, softly rolling mass floating in a sky of azure.
“From that?” she inquired.
Carlo considered the cloud and was pleased with it as a source. “Yes,” he said.
“It looks soft and sleepy,” she observed, after a more critical consideration.
They contemplated each other in a silence which threatened to become a deadlock, when he broke it.
“Do you like gum?” he asked.
“What's gum?”