Jill and Lill by Nina Rhoades

It was Christmas afternoon, and the twins were alone in the tiny apartment. It had been a very strange, dull Christmas, although every one had been kind, and the Palonis had done their best to give the little girls a good time. In the morning Signora Paloni had taken them to the Christmas mass at the Duomo, and they had really enjoyed the beautiful music, and the unfamiliar service. When Mummy was at home they always attended the little American church, where the service was very simple, a great contrast to the high mass at the cathedral. Afterwards they had dined with their kind landlord and his wife, and feasted on roast chicken stuffed with chestnuts, a delicacy very rare in their simple lives, for meat costs money, and Mummy's means were limited. And now it was late in the afternoon, and the Palonis had gone out to spend the evening, leaving the twins in charge of Tessa, the Italian maid-of-all-work, who had promised to give them their supper, and see that they went to bed at their usual hour. They were both feeling very forlorn and lonely. They missed their mother more than they liked to talk about, and they had been obliged to "pretend" very hard all the afternoon, in order to keep up even the faintest semblance of cheerfulness. They had in turn personated most of their favorite characters, including Queen Elizabeth, George Washington, and Savonarola. They had heard a great deal about Savonarola through having spent so much time in Florence. At last Jill proposed that they should be the little Princes in the Tower.

"We haven't played that since that afternoon in the gallery," she said. "It was the day Mummy told us about going to Sicily, wasn't it?"