This child was perhaps twelve years old, and he had the face of an angel. He had begun to lose his daily feverishness after a week in the mountains, and was soon able to limp, and later to run feebly about the field with the village boys.
Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden terrace.
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But Natale, spidery little Natale, interested every one more even than did Pietro. Yet he looked only an everyday lad during the long summer days, when he trotted up and down, to and from the town, carrying now a bowl of this, now a flask of that, but always carrying something. To most people he seemed as happy as the days were long, just as ready for a chat with a strange foreigner who might address him in broken Italian as with old Sora Teresa who sold fruit and vegetables in the piazza, and who sometimes presented him with a ripe red tomato, or a slice of melon all green and pink.
But Mrs. Bishop looked down upon the tent from the garden terrace of Madame Cioche’s boarding-house every day, and slowly formed a plan for making Natale’s life happier. Poor little Natale!
The terrace garden above the field was shaded with plane trees and the mountain ash, and the grass was soft and richly green. Each afternoon some of the boarders would gather at the palings on the edge of this garden and watch the gentlemen playing ball below, and the village boys imitating Olga and Natale at turning somersaults and wheels.
One afternoon, while the boarders were drinking tea under the ash trees, with the berries overhead turning red, and the sun streaming across the croquet ground, there came a knock at the side door of the boarding-house. Madame Cioche herself opened the door, and there stood Natale, smiling up into her face, with the old blue hat set far back on his dark curls. The lady noticed that the boy’s face was very clean.
“Happy day to you,” he said brightly, using the peasant form of address, “and my mamá says will you please send her a cup of tea? She is feeling ill to-day.”
Of course Madame Cioche would send the tea, fetching it herself from the dining room and handing it to the boy. But she kept Natale a moment to ask how it was that his mamá could possibly like tea.
“Oh, but she has it every day when we are in Egypt,” was the reply. “And to-day her head aches. Thank you, Signora.” And Natale went off down the hill carrying the big cup as carefully as his bowls and flasks were always carried.