CHAPTER XIV
CARLO AS GUIDE
THE first night that Patty spent in Florence she awoke about midnight, thinking she heard music.
“I must have been dreaming,” she said to herself, and then, again, she heard lovely strains, as of some one singing outside her window.
She jumped up and ran to peep through the blinds. Sure enough a small crowd of people stood in the white roadway that divided the hotel from the river, and four men were singing beautiful music. The others were passers-by, who had stopped to listen, and who stood about or sat on the low parapet.
“I’m being serenaded!” thought Patty; “it must be by those two Italian soldiers!”
Flinging on a kimono, she flew into the next room to wake Flo.
“Get up!” she cried, shaking the sleeping girl. “Get up! Signor Vaselino, or whatever his name is, is serenading us!”
“What?” murmured sleepy Flo.
“Oh, get up, you slow thing! Get up first, and understand afterward. Here’s your dressing-gown,—here are your slippers. Put your foot in!”