“Stop crying!” ordered Poor Cecco, who disliked being hugged in public. “Tell me at once, Jensina, what this means? For I think,” he added sternly, “you know more about this business than you told us, and I suspected all along you had something up your sleeve!”
“It isn’t up my sleeve,” said Jensina. “It is—but stay! Who knows what ears may be listening? How much better if I had never deceived you, but told you the whole truth from the beginning!”
“It certainly would!” said Poor Cecco, while Bulka, who hated to see any one cry except himself, uttered hastily: “Don’t be cross to her!”
Jensina, however, had stopped weeping. Sitting down on the floor, and drying her eyes with the edge of her frock, she began:
“When I first came to live among the ash-heaps where you met me I was very lonely. For long weeks I saw no one to speak to. I’ve always been used to company, and little by little, if only to pass the time of day, I was forced to make acquaintance with the rats. They were the only people living there, I was quite at their mercy, and I had to be polite. There was one among them, lame in the hind leg and better mannered than the others, who had been kind to me in the beginning, and he used to come sometimes of an evening and drink a cup of coffee at my house. It was from him I learned the few words of rat language that I know.
