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some time before he could get near enough to make his venture. Then, his halfpenny paid, he had made a sudden dip, and got nothing. Instead of howling like the others, when unsuccessful, he only sighed, bit his lips, and, after a long fumble in the pocket of his ragged trousers, fished out another coin. This time he waited quite a minute, fork in hand, before risking his last chance. Then he made his plunge, and again fished out nothing at all.

Lina tugged her uncle's coat, "Please let me have a try," she whispered hurriedly.

Her uncle was astonished, but granted her request, and handed a soldo to the red-faced man. The boys were quite still for a moment, in wonder at seeing a young lady try her luck among them. Trembling with excitement, Lina seized the greasy fork, and without an instant's pause plunged it into the pot, and brought it out speared in a bit of meat as large as a moderately-sized chop.

"

Well, now you must take it in your fingers to eat it," laughed her uncle, seeing her look round as

though she didn't know what to do with her prize.

But Lina did not want it for herself, and making her way to where her unlucky predecessor was looking on with hungry, envious eyes, she held out to him the tempting morsel, saying, with an encouraging nod, "Take it, little boy, it is for you." How his face brightened up, and how he bade the Virgin bless the kind signorina as he seized the meat in his fingers!

"Bravo! my little good-heart!" exclaimed her uncle. "Now it is time to go home, unless Rosalia would like to try her luck too."

But Rosalia shook her head just a little disdainfully. She was too big to compromise her dignity in that fashion; and though she liked Lina's kindness to the little boy, she secretly hoped that no one in the crowd knew who they were. Perhaps, as Lina was a stranger, it did not matter so much; but it would never do for Rosalia Altovito to do such a thing. Evidently, Mrs. Grundy. is as much feared at Palermo as elsewhere in the world.

CHAPTER X.

SHELLS AND SAND.

WERE I to describe in full all the beautiful places and things little Lina saw during the first happy weeks of her stay at Palermo, this little tale would be transformed into something very like a guidebook.

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Sometimes with her mother, but much oftener with her uncle and Rosalia (Mrs. Gerard preferring the society of her beloved invalid sister to any sort of sight-seeing), Lina roamed about all the marble-lined, fantastically-decorated churches, danced through the gorgeous saloons of the royal palace, and across the long breezy terrace, high in air, that led to the pavilion over the city-gate, where Garibaldi had dwelt in 1860, and from whence his keen eye had kept watch on all the

approaches to the city he had freed from the cruel grasp of the wicked King Ferdinand of Naples. Those observant brown eyes of hers had glistened with delight at the exquisite beauty of the Palatine Chapel, which is perhaps the most perfect little church in the world. A very jewel, with its beautiful marbles and marvellously-glowing mosaics just revealed by a few straggling rays of bright Sicilian sunshine. She had had a merry jolting drive up the steep hill of Monreale, from whence they looked down upon the fairy city beneath, begirt by glossy orange-groves and dazzlingly-blue sea; and then, as they passed the great doors of the gorgeous Monreale Cathedral, even Lina's nimble tongue was hushed into awestruck silence for nearly two whole minutes, as she saw the grand, majestic faces of our Saviour and the Evangelists looking down upon her with solemn kindliness from the mosaic-encrusted vault.

There she had seen all the events of sacred history, from the Creation to the Crucifixion and Resurrection, depicted in the rich mosaics that line

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