Page:Poor Cecco - 1925.djvu/76

66 a check gingham apron, which she had made herself, with a pink mallow-blossom on her head, and was so pleased to see visitors that she jumped up at once when she saw them coming and clapped her hands.

Her name, she told them, was Jensina, and she had been living alone on this ash-heap for weeks and weeks and weeks. She was an industrious little person, one could see at once, and had not wasted her time, for when she led them presently round the side of the ash-heap there stood a cosy little house which she had built herself, out of an old soap-box, and of which she had every reason to be proud. She had spread a bit of carpet on the floor and made a sofa to sleep on, and pillows stuffed with thistle down, and she had hung the walls with scraps of wall-paper and fine pictures of tomatoes and peach-orchards saved from old fruit cans. She had even a little kitchen with plates and egg-cups and a real coffeepot, and all these things she had gathered one by one on the dump-heaps and brought home. Only the coffeepot, being too large, had to stand outside, but it looked very well there, and gave an air of hospitality to the place.

While they sat on the sofa at her invitation, and breakfasted on some canned salmon and graham cracker which she had very luckily brought home just before the stone yesterday, the wooden doll told them her story.

“From the earliest time I can remember,” she said, “I lived with a family of travelling gypsies. They were