"Rather a curious ally for me to take
up with, isn't she?"
"Where did you meet with her?"
"Here, to be sure; she hangs about this place for any plain work
she can get to do, and takes it home to the oddest little room in
a street near the Campo Santo. I had the curiosity to follow her
one day, and knocked at her door soon after she had gone in, as
if I was a visitor. She answered my knock in a great flurry and
fright, as you may imagine. I made myself agreeable, affected
immense interest in her affairs, and so got into her room. Such a
place! A mere corner of it curtained off to make a bedroom. One
chair, one stool, one saucepan on the fire. Before the hearth the
most grotesquely hideous unshaven poodle-dog you ever saw; and on
the stool a fair little girl plaiting dinner-mats. Such was the
household--furniture and all included. 'Where is your father?' I
asked. 'He ran away and left us years ago,' answers my awkward
little friend who has just left the room, speaking in that simple
way of hers, with all the composure in the world. 'And your
mother?'--'Dead.' She went up to the little mat-plaiting girl as
she gave that answer, and began playing with her long flaxen
hair. 'Your sister, I suppose,' said I. 'What is her
name?'--'They call me La Biondella,' says the child, looking up
from her mat (La Biondella, Virginie, means The Fair). 'And why
do you let that great, shaggy, ill-looking brute lie before your
fireplace?' I asked.
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