"I begin to understand," said Aunt Caroline, "he wished us to give these old men money that they could eat macaroni for us. Now we will let him do what he will. He has some plan."
A moment later he had driven them to an open space at the junction of two streets, where a man was cooking macaroni in a large copper vessel. Two or three little boys who had been following the carriage now stepped up beside the horses, and they, too, made the gesture in imitation of eating, at the same time crying, "Soldi, soldi."
"Oh, yes, I recall it all now," said Aunt Caroline, laughing. "It was the same when we were here before." Then she threw some coppers to the little boys, who immediately handed them over to the man at the cooking stall. He, in his turn, gave each a heaped-up plate of macaroni cooked with tomato.
"It would be worth three times the price, though I don't know just what you gave them, Aunt Caroline, to see those boys eat such a quantity, and it all disappeared in an instant."
"It is one of the accomplishments of the Neapolitan street boy to devour at lightning speed great plates of macaroni, in return for the soldi of the stranger. Their manner of conveying the macaroni to their mouths with the sole use of their fingers is indeed a regular circus trick."
"If the same boys repeat the trick many times a day, I should think they might have indigestion."
"They are willing to suffer, for they love macaroni. The poorest Neapolitans eat much uncooked food, not only fruits, but fish and raw vegetables. But the macaroni with pomo d'oro is a real delicacy. Some of those old men would probably have done the trick as adroitly as the boys."
The driver, smiling broadly on account of his success, as he turned about drove again through squalid narrow streets. Those in the carriage could here look through open doors into the one untidy room, the basso that formed the abiding place often for a large family.