“Dead!” cried Olga. “I believe you truly do think that, when you set up your crying, Natale; really I did not do it half so well as you,” she confessed honestly.
“But you ‘wheel’ much better than I do,” Natale conceded with ready generosity in return.
“Il Duca did not shut his eyes at all,” Olga went on, nodding assent to Natale’s remark, “and I am sure he winked at me, Natale, just to frighten me. It did not take me long to feel his pulse! But where were you, Natalino, all the time? Nonna said she was afraid some of the peasants had stolen you and carried you off, when Niero and Bianco came home without you.”
“As if they would have let anybody steal me! Olga, I went to sleep in the church, waiting for the saints to come back, and when I waked it was dark, almost as dark as this!”
“Oho! then you must have been in the church when Arduina and I went in to look at the saints. Arduina said—but you must not dare to tell anybody—she said that she did not believe there were any bones under the saints’ fine velvet robes because San Lorenzo had a hand of pink wax, and the rest of him looked rather stuffed. But do not tell Nonna, Natale!”
“Arduina is very wicked,” said Natale, but he laughed with Olga, and then felt much better, and as if he could ask about the losing of the money.
They were in a little nook to themselves, behind the wagon, and no one heeded them.
“Ecco! it was this way,” Olga began, charmed to be the first to recount the misfortune to Natale, who was usually behind none in his knowledge of the affairs of the company. “Just when Giovanni was going in to do the clown in the first dance on the rope, the Signor Barbera, the stable man, came behind the big tent with his bill for keeping the horses, and Giovanni took the big pocketbook out of the pocket of his coat—”
“Yes, I know which pocket,” Natale interposed. “I saw him put the money there this morning.”
“Well, the signor could not make the change, so he told Giovanni it was all right, and any time would do, and then Antonio rang the bell for Giovanni, and he just put the pocketbook back in his coat and hung the coat on the nail in the little tent, and hurried on the black coat, and went into the ring.”