"Keep me from adventures!" exclaimed the lady. "Did not the girl tell us—I could hardly understand her, for she spoke so fast—of people being robbed and murdered on the high road by banditti?"
"Ah! But the soldiers are wide awake," suggested Horace, helping the maccaroni. "I hope that they—" (he was not now speaking of the military) "will bring us something better worth eating than this!"
Giuseppina pushed the door open with her knee, and reentered, a dish of omelet in one hand, a second full of snow in the other, and a bottle of wine under her arm.
"Where will the soldiers be to-night?" asked Mrs. Cleveland with some anxiety. "I wish that we had asked for an escort."
"They'll be at Staiti, no doubt," answered Giuseppina, setting down the viands which she had brought.
"We'll be at Staiti to-night also," said Horace; adding in English, "so, mother, you need fear nothing."
"Staiti to-night! No, it would be dark ere the signori could arrive there," observed Giuseppina; "The signori can have good beds here."
"Here!" exclaimed Horace, looking around him in disgust. "The place is not fit for a hound!"
"But, my dear child," said Mrs. Cleveland, "safety is to be thought of even before comfort."
Horace replied to his mother, like herself speaking in English, which Giuseppina, unnecessarily loitering by the table, tried to understand with her eyes, as it conveyed no meaning to her ears: "You talk of safety as if this place were safe. Have you not just heard that one of the gang of banditti is below—a fellow let loose from a prison?"