“But won’t the mother, or some one, come with her?” she asked, in surprise.
“You would be no better off, for they can’t any of ’em speak English. I have promised to bring her and fetch her away, anyway.”
“Tom, I don’t know how to thank you for what you are doing for me; but it is awful to be under such an obligation to anyone,” she said, the tears coming to her eyes.
“If you think it’s any hardship to ride around in a cab with the young lady, just wait until you see her. She is a raving, tearing beauty,” he answered, laughing, but Elizabeth was none the less grateful.
Tom’s enthusiastic description of the child was borne out by the facts, and it was a very beautiful and very dainty little lady whom he carried into the studio the next morning. She was typically Italian, and the dark hair, warm, brown skin and large, soft eyes, gave her almost an Oriental expression, in spite of the conventional frills and furbelows in which she was dressed.
“Here she is, Betsy,” said Tom, gayly, as he sat down with the youngster on his lap. “Now tell me what you want her to do, and I will translate for you, for I must leave her with you while I go to the office.” Elizabeth looked at the child, who was gravely inspecting the studio with wise-looking eyes.
“But, Tom, suppose she should cry or anything; what am I to do? She can’t understand me, and I shouldn’t know what to say, anyway.”
“And this is what comes of being an independent woman,” he said, looking at her in disapproval. “Well, you will have to take a chance, and get on the best you know how, but I shall have luncheon sent in here, and come back to eat it with you, for I can’t trust the child’s diet to a bachelor maid.”
Carlotta was frightened when Tom left, and Elizabeth began, rather timidly, to comfort her; but she found it an easier task than she had imagined. The feeling of the warm young body against her breast, the sweet perfume of the child’s hair and the caressing touch of the little hands as they crept about her neck, were grateful to the lonely artist, and somewhere in the womanhood within her, she found words which Carlotta could understand, although they belonged to no language known to grownups. After the first feeling of strangeness had worn off, the child was quite contented with her, and so comfortable and comforting in her arms that but little progress had been made with the portrait when a waiter brought in the luncheon which Tom had ordered from a neighboring restaurant. Tom came back to eat it with them, and he was entirely satisfied with the friendship which had sprung up between the woman and the child.
“I was asked to give you this; it seems that it is an Italian custom to pay part in advance,” he said, handing her an envelope as he left her, and when she opened it she found a crisp and substantial bank note. He took the little girl home that night, and when he returned to take Elizabeth out to dinner, she was so elated that she seemed to be walking on air; but she insisted that they go to a little Italian restaurant, where she had been in the habit of dining.