MAM SEN GS GiG LIOMWSE OO NE

Now Mamsey is gifted with powers of divination and she smiled to herself.
“It will be a giglio spoon —a birthday gift for me!” she divined. She called
the boy and said :

“Now, my dear little Folly, I will let you have your ten francs and
walk to Florence —but not alone. You are too small to spend ten francs by
yourself. You would be sure to buy something you would not care for. I will
ask Herr August to take you; will that do, Folly?” The boy was delighted.

“ And you will not ask me for why, Mamsey ?”

“‘ No, dear, I will not ask you for why.” |

Herr August, the children’s friend, smiled over Mamsey’s divination and
entered into the spirit of Folly’s surprise, as only Herr August could. One day
Mamsey took her trio to the Bargello, that stern old prison-palace of the Middle
Ages which is now transformed into the National Museum.

They looked in vain for the Diavolino and paused before the exquisite
bronze of Mercury by Gian of Bologna.

“Why, he made also the Diavolino!”” exclaimed Bonnie, for the Florentine
imp is her favorite spoon.

“Yes;” echoed Don, “and the big green statue of Cosimo I., in the
Piazza della Signoria.”

Mamsey pointed out the winged cap and sandals of the Mercury, and bade
them observe the delicate poise of the figure which seems about to spring into
the air and wing its untrammeled way far up above the clouds. Then to im-
press the aérial god upon the childish minds, Mamsey added: “One of the
Florentine spoons bears this flymg Mercury.”

Bonnie instantly nudged Folly with a vigorous elbow.

“A Mercury spoon, a Mercury spoon!” she whispered.

“ Be quiet!” shrieked Folly ; “ she will hear you.”

Mamsey’s face was marvelously impassive, but that evening she said to Herr
August: “Folly will wish to buy a Mercury spoon, but please do not let him
spend more than his ten francs.”

Thus the day came when Folly trudged off to town in his dainty white
flannel sailor suit with the ten francs tucked safely away in his breast pocket.
Herr August met him at the square of San Marco, and changed the trip into a
treat by giving him cakes and chocolate at what Don calls “a sweet shop.”

Then — but why tell where they went? Mamsey divined, but she did not
follow.

For a week to come the five children kept the secret bravely. Only Laddie,
the scamp, confided to Mamsey —

“ Folly bringed you a buful ’poon!”

And Lella asked again and again; “What me give you for you birfday,
Mamsey?”

March twentieth came all too quickly. After thirty, birthdays are so will-