On the steps of the Cathedral they witnessed a pretty sight.
“Peripatetica,” announced Jane, “I will not walk back to the hotel! It may be only one mile from town, by the high road, but it was certainly four by that short cut, and all this hill-climbing on slippery cobbles has turned my knees to tissue paper. The boy must get us a cab—how does one say it? You tell him.”
The boy hesitated at first at Peripatetica’s request, but went off in obedience to the firm command of her tone.
Accustomed to the ubiquitous, ever present and ever-pestering cab of Taormina and Syracuse, they expected his instant return. But the minutes passed and passed, and sitting on the parapet of the Cathedral steps they had long opportunity to watch the world wag on. Apparently it was “Children’s Day” at the Cathedral, to which they were being mustered for catechism. The swarms inside were now explained. Though it had seemed as if every child in town must already be there, they were still flocking in.
Mites of every size and sort between the ages of two and ten, small things with no accompanying elders, came toiling up the steep streets Cathedralwards, climbing the long flights of steps and boldly shoving into the great doorway.
But the different manner of their coming! The unfaltering steady advance of the devout—heads brushed, shirts and frocks clean, faces set and solemn, no words or smiles for their companions, minds fixed on duty. Little girls came in bands, tongues going like mill-hoppers even as they plunged within the sacred portal. Little boys enlivened their pilgrimage with chasings and scuffles. Wee tots, timidly attached to the hand of some patriarch of eight or nine; receiving therefrom protecting encouragement, or being ruthlessly dragged along at the top speed of chubby legs, regardless of their streaming tears. Loiterers arriving with panting pink tongues, stockings half off and dragging, clothes all in disarray from some too delightful game on the way, plodding breathless up the steps with worried rubbings on clothes of dirty little paws; still casting reluctant looks at the sunshine before they made the plunge behind the dark leather curtain. Reprobates, at the very last refusing to enter at all; refusing to exchange the outer darkness of play and sunshine for the inner light of wax tapers and the Catechism; giving themselves boldly over to sin on the very Cathedral steps in merry games of tag and loud jeerings and floutings of the old beggar men who had given up their sunny posts at the doors in attempts to drive these backsliders in. And the Reluctant, coming with slow and dragging feet; heads turned back to all the mundane charms of the streets, lingering as long as possible before final hesitating entrance. For these last it was very hard that, straight in their way, just in front of the Cathedral, a brother Girgentian, whose very tender age still rendered him immune from religious duties, was thrillingly disporting himself with an iron barrel-hoop tied to a string, the leg of a chicken, and two most delightful mud-puddles. The care-free sportings and delicious condition of dirt of this Blessed Being made their own soaped and brushed virtue most cruelly unsatisfying to many of the Pilgrims. But there was the Infant Example, who, with crisp short skirts rustling complacency, and Mother’s large Prayer-book clasped firmly to her bosom, climbed the steps with eyes rolled raptly heavenwards and little black pig-tails vibrating piety. And some little boys with both stockings firmly gartered, jackets irreproachably buttoned, and a consciousness of all the answers to the Catechism safely bestowed in their sleek little heads, made their way in eagerly, wrapped in the “showing off” excitement. These little Lambs passed coldly and disapprovingly through those who had chosen to be goats in the outer sunshine. But many small ewes sent glances of fearful admiration from soft dark eyes at those bold flouters of authority, and many proper youths looked sidewise at them so longingly it was plain that only the fear of evil report taken home by sisters in tow, kept them from joining the Abandoned Ones.
Peripatetica, amused and interested, forgot the flight of time. Jane, suddenly realizing it, cried:
“That boy has been gone a half hour—do you suppose you really told him to get a cab? I believe you must have said something wild and strange which the poor thing will spend the rest of his life questing while we turn into lichens on this parapet.”
Peripatetica, indignantly denying this slur on her Italian, insisted she had clearly and correctly demanded a cab, and a cab only.
“I remember,” she reflected, “the boy looked very troubled as he went off—and now that I come to think of it, we haven’t met a horse in this town to-day. The Romans must have looted all the conveyances in their last sack of the city; the only one left is now kept in the Museum in a glass case, and allowed out for no less a person than the German Emperor—but I won’t walk back. I should suppose the boy had deserted us, except that he hasn’t been paid.”