She and her mother lived all alone in an
old stone house that looked on a dark, narrow street. They were very
poor, and the mother was away from home almost every day, washing
clothes and scrubbing floors, and working hard to earn money for her
little girl and herself. So you see Piccola was alone a great deal of
the time; and if she had not been a very happy, contented little
child, I hardly know what she would have done. She had no playthings
except a heap of stones in the back yard that she used for building
houses and a very old, very ragged doll that her mother had found in
the street one day.
But there was a small round hole in the stone wall at the back of her
yard, and her greatest pleasure was to look through that into her
neighbor's garden. When she stood on a stone, and put her eyes close
to the hole, she could see the green grass in the garden, and smell
the sweet flowers, and even hear the water splashing into the
fountain. She had never seen anyone walking in the garden, for it
belonged to an old gentleman who did not care about grass and flowers.
One day in the autumn her mother told her that the old gentleman had
gone away, and had rented his house to a family of little American
children, who had come with their sick mother to spend the winter in
Italy. After this, Piccola was never lonely, for all day long the
children ran and played and danced and sang in the garden.
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