THE STORY OF A PICTURE.

and enjoy yourself in play and sport. You have many
pleasures, I have only one; leave me my secret and
my lonely evenings. And even," he added, if I did
tell you, you would say that it was nothing."
 "I would not-indeed I would not 1"
 ""Ah 1" answered Pietro, "if you could guess it,
you would not say so. I must go; I have stayed too
long idling here."
 "Idling, Pietro! Oh! don't call this idleness.
"Why should you not rest, when your work is done ?
Oh I if I was only rich, I'd rest and play always-if I
was only rich !"
 "That is your greatest desire then, Leonardo;
may it be fulfilled. But my aim I shall have, whether
Fortune favours me or not. Already I have begun to
work for it; some day-surely some day-it will be
mine."
 He rose, his face flushed, and his dark eyes looking
still more lustrous from the earnestness with which he
had spoken. He cast his rod to his friend, and, without
saying another word, turned away. He crossed the
stream by a rustic bridge a few paces distant, and was
soon lost to sight in a plantation close by.
 Leonardo's first impulse was, to follow him; but
before doing so, he cast a glance first at the setting
sun, which told that the summer evening was far
spent, then back towards the village. It was then
that he saw tripping lightly across the grass to the
spot where he was sitting, a child dressed in the simple
but picturesque costume of the peasantry of the
Romagna. Her face, almost completely shaded by the
broad leaf of her hat, was flushed by the long run
across the meadow, and her hair, somewhat disarranged,
fell on her neck in a profusion of black glossy curls.
 "COh, Leonardo !" she exclaimed, "1I have been