besides, they have got a certain repugnance for this poor little waif,
cast up by that dreadful storm, and who is doubtless a heathen, for she
had no little crosses or scapulars on, like proper Christian children.
So, being unable to get any of our women to adopt the child, and having
an old bachelor's terror of my housekeeper, I have bethought me of
certain nuns, holy women, who teach little girls to say their prayers
and make lace close by here; and of your dear Excellency to pay for the
whole business.

Poor little brown mite! She was picked up after the storm (such a
set-out of ship-models and votive candles as that storm must have
brought the Madonna at Porto Venere!) on a strip of sand between the
rocks of our castle: the thing was really miraculous, for this coast is
like a shark's jaw, and the bits of sand are tiny and far between. She
was lashed to a plank, swaddled up close in outlandish garments; and
when they brought her to me they thought she must certainly be dead: a
little girl of four or five, decidedly pretty, and as brown as a berry,
who, when she came to, shook her head to show she understood no kind of
Italian, and jabbered some half-intelligible Eastern jabber, a few
Greek words embedded in I know not what; the Superior of the College De
Propaganda Fide would be puzzled to know. The child appears to be the
only survivor from a ship which must have gone down in the great
squall, and whose timbers have been strewing the bay for some days
past; no one at Spezia or in any of our ports knows anything about her,
but she was seen, apparently making for Porto Venere, by some of our
sardine-fishers: a big, lumbering craft, with eyes painted on each side
of the prow, which, as you know, is a peculiarity of Greek boats. She
was sighted for the last time off the island of Palmaria, entering,
with all sails spread, right into the thick of the storm-darkness. No
bodies, strangely enough, have been washed ashore.