"Can you not make it better ?" "I wish I could, my darling!" I murmured.

"I would bear all the pain for you if it were possible!" She was silent a minute.

Then she said: "What a long time you have been away! And now I am too ill to play with you!" Then a faint smile crossed her features.

"See poor To-to!" she exclaimed, feebly, as her eyes fell on a battered old doll in the spangled dress of a carnival clown that lay at the foot of her bed.
"Poor dear old To-to! He will think I do not love him any more, because my throat hurts me.

Give him to me, papa!" And as I obeyed her request she encircled the doll with one arm, while she still clung to me with the other, and added: "To-to remembers you, papa; you know you brought him from Rome, and he is fond of you, too--but not as fond as I am!" And her dark eyes glittered feverishly.