An orange which a neighbour brought in hanging on the bough, with its dark green leaves, was much more tempting, and when she took it from the woman who offered it to her, she said, "Grazia"—she knew that meant "Thank you"—for Francesco always said "Grazia" when he took the little copper pieces of money, which seemed so many, and were worth so little, from her hand or Irene's when they had dismounted from the donkeys.
Presently a familiar voice at the door made Dorothy stop eating the orange, and she turned her eye anxiously towards the new-comer.
It was Francesco himself, who began to tell what grief there was in Villa Firenze, and how a little signorina was lost, and he held up a crumpled wisp of paper, and said he had picked it up in the market square.
"Oh! it is mine, it is mine, Francesco. Don't you know me, Francesco? It is my letter to Uncle Crannie. Francesco! Francesco!"
The boy began a series of jumps of joy and springs of delight, and clapped his hands.
"Trovata! trovata!—è la piccola signorina" ("Found! found! the little lady is found"), he said.
"Let me go with him! he knows where I live. Oh, tell them—tell them to let me go with you!"
A voluble stream of Italian was poured forth by every one, which Dorothy could not understand; but Giulia got Dorothy's hat, and the white scarf, and the pretty velvet jacket, and then she was dressed—not without many expressions of profound admiration for the soft white feather and the velvet—and made ready to start with Francesco. Not alone. No; Giulia was not going to trust her to the donkey-boy without her, and Francesco made a funny face and showed his white teeth between his bright red lips, and whispered in Dorothy's ear the one English word he perfectly understood—
"Money! money! she get money for the signorina—ah! ah! ah!"
I will not say that there was no thought in Giulia's mind that the mother whom Francesco had described as crying bitterly for her lost treasure might not add some silver coins to her stock kept in the old stone pipkin in the cupboard—a store which Giulia liked to see grow, because, when her Anton was big and strong, she would pay it to the good master fisherman who employed her to make and mend his nets, and had often said her dark-eyed Anton was born to be a sailor.