to my house. Mamma Letitia is away visiting, and I shall have the best
chance. I promise you; you shall see."

"Hurry, then," said Panoria. "It is better than braving the black elves,
this that you are to do, Eliza. For truly I think your uncle the canon
must be an ogre."

"You shall see," Eliza declared again; and, running after Nurse Saveria,
they were soon in the narrow street in which, standing across the way
from a little park, was the big, bare, yellowish-gray, four-story house
in which lived the Bonaparte family, always hard pushed for money, and
having but few of the fine things which so large a house seemed to call
for. Indeed, they would have had scarcely anything to live on had it not
been for this same important relative, "our uncle, the Canon Lucien,"
who spent much of his yearly salary of fifteen hundred dollars upon this
family of his nephew, "Papa Charles," one of whom was now about to make
a raid upon his picked and particular pears.




CHAPTER TWO.

THE CANON'S PEARS,

When the little girls had left him, Napoleon remained for some moments
standing in the mouth of his grotto. His hands were clasped behind his
back, his head was bent, his eyes were fixed upon the sea.

This, as I have told you, was a favorite attitude of the little boy,