on warm days, when the restaurant doors were open, she could hear him
singing, not always "Ogostine," but festal lilts of Italy, liquid and
strangely sweet to her; and at such times, when the actual voice was
not in her ears, still she blushed with delight to hear in her heart
the thrilling echoes of his barcaroles, and found them humming
cheerily upon her own lips.

Toby was to save five hundred dollars before they married, a great
sum, but they were patient and both worked very hard. The winter would
have fallen bitterly upon an outdoor merchant lacking Toby's confident
heart, but on the coldest days, when Bertha looked out, she always
found him slapping his hands, and trudging up and down in the snow in
front of the little box; and, as soon as he caught sight of
her--"Aha-ha, du libra Ogostine, Ogostine, Ogostine!"

She saved her own money with German persistence, and on Christmas day
her present to her betrothed, in return for a coral pin, was a pair of
rubber boots filled with little cakes.

Elysium was the dwelling-place of Pietro Tobigli, though, apparently,
he abode in a horrible slum cellar with Leo Vesschi and the five Latti
brothers. In this place our purveyor of sweetmeats was the only
light. Thither he had carried his songs and his laugh and his furnace
when he came from Italy to join Vesschi; and there he remained, partly
out of loyalty to his un-prosperous comrades, and partly because his
share of the expense was only twenty-five cents a week, and every
saving was a saving for Bertha. Every evening, on the homeward walk,
the affianced pair passed the hideous stairway that led down to the
cellar, and Bertha, neat soul, never failed to shudder at it. She did
not know that Pietro lived there, for he feared it might distress her;