The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1891-04-23

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breast ling
convulsively under it's kerchief.
II hate you! 1 hate you!" she cried.
"You tease me! You torment me!
May San Marco see to it that you
have no luck!''
''Oh! Ha, ha! You hate me? No,
dear child, not at all! You could not
hate me!' Marino laughed more and
more. A full laugh was his that lifted
the red lips from his cleaning teeth
and made his eyes dance like the water
OF the lagoon out there when the sun
ran over it. "Come, will you forgive
me? Will you kiss me in token of for
giveness; little one?'
He stretced out his arm. With one
backward flash of her night-b black eyes
the little girlhad fled along the narrow
passage-way, and the men on the
watersteps joined with Marine in the
laugh and the mother shrugged her
shoulders and repeated: "You should
not tease the child"
By and by Marino ceased to tease
her, for he went away with the
other sailors, and the moons waxed
and waned, and still he came net
again.
"And where is Marino?" asked Tout
ella when they sat along the water
steps in the cool OF the evening, and
the setting sun turned all Venice rosy
over her palaces and her canals.
ooh! Marine is gone on the sea.
Where? How do I know where?
What questions the child asks" re-
piled Marino's mother.
But Touiella pondered, and when
Marino at length came back she asked
him. And he told her the names of
many places she had never heard OF,
lar, very far away they must be. They
were not towns like Venice, with wa
tiers In their streets. But they had
ports where the ships passed in and
out and where the mates went ashore
and met other gay comrades and
pretty girls in plenty.
"Pretty? Are the girls as pretty as
In Venice?' asked Touiella, and her
sallow face turned paler as Marine
laughed out:
What do you know yet about
pretty girls, you little baby?' -.
II am not a baby!" she flashed up
on him, II am soon to be grown
woman!"
But Marino only laughed again. AS
small as she was, and as slight and
thin and brown, with her eyes burn
ing out OF her lank visage, it was hard
to figure her as soon to become a
grown woman. And so, laughing still,
Marlno once more went his way. And
when he came back, after a shorter
Journey than most, he brought Tout
ella string of gaudy beads to wear
about her neck.
"For If you're going to be a woman
the gallants will be beginning to look
at you. And you must make your
self pretty, and get a husband"
But Touiella turned crimson to the
roots of her thick, coarse, blue-black
hair.
II will marry no one-ever," she
declared, and her eyebrows came to-
gether in a frown. @..
"Wait and see-wait and see," sang
Marine, and without looking back,
and always singing, went to sea again
Thus passed the months, and Tout.
ella wore the beads under her ker.
chief, and the boys and young men be.
gan to look at her more as she pass,
ed, and ohe said to her, as she came
from the well with her water pitcher
''You are pretty, little one"-
She pushed him roughly from her
and went or, without word. But she
gazed long at the beads all night, and
her cheek turned warmer. And finally
as she stood one evening under the
wide doorway, Marine came and
stopped short before her. He looked
at her long, and his eyes seemed tc
grow darker as he looked. l-.
"And this is Touiella? You little
brown thing, you have grown to be 6
woman, after all, haven't your" Anc
his voice had a different tone from
that it had usually. And it was some
time before he Thought to ask for the
mother. When he did
"She's lying very Low with a sick
ness," said Touiella.
So low she lay that few days Later
a little boy in a white gown came
along the narrow passage way ring
ing bell, and the priest followed, an6
the people, as he passed bowed Their
heads.
"And was she really gone, Marino's
mother?-well, well. And what would
become OF Touiella now, who had al
ways lived with the dead woman and
been like her own daughter?''
No one thought less of that thar
Tcuiella herself, who sat in the din
doorway while Marino stood before
her and told her stories OF his travels