I suppose the loads were not as heavy as they looked, but the boys were having a hard time of it, to judge from their distressed faces peering anxiously from underneath the rafts which, at each step, rocked to and fro and seemed always on the point of toppling. Frantic clutches of small brown hands and the quick shifting of feet alone saved a smash-up.
The master was still in the schoolhouse with some of the older boys and girls; but the younger ones had rushed out when the bell rang.
"Hi, where are you going?" several shouted. "What you got on your heads?"
The little strangers turned their faces and, nodding violently, tried to smile ingratiatingly. Some one let fly a snowball, and in a moment the mob of boys, shouting and laughing noisily, chased after them. No harm was intended; it was merely excess of spirits at getting out from school. But the result was disastrous. The little fellows faced round in alarm, cried out wildly in an unknown tongue and then, in spite of their burdens, tried to run away.
The inevitable happened: one of them stumbled, fell against the other, and down they both went headlong with a crash. The tall Madonna was broken in two; Washington had his cocked hat crushed; the cherubs had lost their wings; and as for the elephants and the giraffes, there was a general mix-up of broken trunks and long necks.
The little fellows had scrambled to their feet, and after a frightened glance set up wails of lamentation in which the word padrone recurred fast and fearfully. By that time Master Brench, with the older pupils, among whom were my cousins, Addison, Theodora and Ellen, had come out. The old Squire, too, chanced to be approaching with a horse sled; often of late, since the traveling was bad, he had driven to the schoolhouse to get us.
It was a wholly compassionate group that now gathered about the forlorn itinerants. Who they were or whither they were traveling was at first far from clear, for they could not speak a word of English.
At last the old Squire, touched by their looks of despair and sorrow, decided to put their "rafts" on the horse sled and to take the little strangers home with us for the night.
They seemed to be chilled to the very marrow of their bones, for they hung round the stove in the kitchen as if they would never thaw out. When grandmother Ruth set a warm supper before them, they ate like starved animals and cast pathetic glances at the table to see whether there was more food. Tears stood in grandmother's eyes as she replenished their plates.
Little by little, with the aid of many signs and gestures, they managed to tell us their story. A padrone had brought them with nine other boys from Naples to sell plaster images for him; we gathered that this man, who lived in Portland, cast the images himself. The only English words he had taught them were "ten cent," "twenty-five cent" and "fifty cent"—the prices of the plaster casts.