All round the town stretches the open country. Low sandy hills dotted with olive and cyprus trees, melting into a blue sweep of mountains; and about a mile from one of the gates stands the rambling white house with closed shutters in which Maddalena, the housekeeper, lived alone with her two grandchildren.
She was a kind old woman and fond of the twins, who had been left orphans when they were mere babies, but she often thought that surely no grandmother had ever been plagued before, as she was plagued by Tuttu and Tutti.
"When they were infants it was easy enough," she would declare to a sympathizing neighbour. "Give them a fig or something to play with, and they were perfectly happy; but at times now I am tempted to wish they had no legs, what with accidents and mischief.—Not that they're not fine children, and may be a comfort to my old age, but it's a harassing thing, waiting."
It was certainly a fact that Tuttu and Tutti were constantly in mischief; and yet their curly black heads, red cheeks, and great brown eyes, were so attractive, that people—even those whose property had been seriously injured by them—treated them leniently, and let them off with a scolding.
The twins were always repentant after one of their misfortunes, and made serious promises of amendment; but at the next temptation they forgot all their good resolutions, and never remembered them until they were in disgrace again.
Grandmother Maddalena devised numerous punishments for the children, such as tacking a cow's head cut out of red stuff, on their backs, when they had teazed Aunt Eucilda's cow—or tieing them up by one leg, with a long cord to the table, for stone-throwing; but Tuttu and Tutti were incorrigible.
They wept loudly, embraced their grandmother, made all kinds of promises—and the next day went off to do just the same things all over again.
There was only one person who had any influence over them, Father Giacomo, the priest of the little Church of Sancta Maria del Fiore, close by. He had known them from the time they were helpless babies in swaddling clothes, till they grew to be mischievous creatures in homespun trousers; and in every stage of character and clothing he had borne with them, taught them, played with them, and loved them, until the Padre had become their idea of all that was wise and good, and they would do more for the sake of pleasing him than for anyone in the world, not even excepting their grandmother.
Every Sunday afternoon Father Giacomo called to take them for a walk, the one only sure way of keeping them out of mischief; and sometimes to their great delight they would go along the olive-bordered road to Siena, returning in the evening to the Padre's house, in time to have a good game with the two cats Neri and Bianca, who had lived there since their infancy, as important members of the household.
On their eighth birthday, Tuttu and Tutti assured their grandmother that they really intended to reform. They promised faithfully to give up tree climbing, fishing in the pond, and many other favourite sports, and commenced to dig in the piece of kitchen garden under their grandmother's direction. In fact so zealous did Tuttu become that he borrowed a knife from one of the farm labourers who was vine pruning, and cut the whole of the branches off a vine near the house, ending with a terrible gash in his own thumb, which necessitated his being carried in an ox-cart to the hospital in Siena, supported in his grandmother's arms; while Tutti walked behind weeping bitterly, under the impression that the doctor would certainly kill Tuttu this time for his carelessness.