"I will wake them," answered Pasquale. "I supposed that they were allowed to sleep after daylight."
A moment later Zorzi heard him apostrophising the three lads with his usual vigour of language. Judging from the sounds that accompanied the words he was encouraging their movements by other means also. Presently one of the three set up a howl.
"Oh, you sons of snails and codfish, I will teach you!" growled Pasquale; and he proceeded to teach them, till they were all three howling at once.
Zorzi knew that they deserved a beating, but he was naturally tender-hearted.
"Pasquale!" he called out. "Let them alone! Let them make up the fire!"
Pasquale came back, and the yells subsided.
"I have knocked their empty heads together," he observed. "They will not sleep for a week. Yes, the sand-glass has run out, but the fire is not very low. I will bring you water, and when you are dressed I will carry you out into the laboratory."
The boys did not dare to go away till they had made up the fire. Then they took themselves off, and as Pasquale let them out he treated them to a final expression of his opinion. The tallest of the three was bleeding from his nose, which had been brought into violent conjunction with the skull of one of his companions. When the door was shut, and they had gone a few steps along the footway, he stopped the others.
"We are glass-blowers' sons," he said, "and we have been beaten by that swine of a porter. Let us be revenged on him. Even Zorzi would not have dared to touch us, because he is a foreigner."
"We can do nothing," answered the smallest boy disconsolately. "If I tell my father that we went to sleep, he will say that the porter served us right, and I shall get another beating."