“You will have new clothes and shoes!”
“And a new hat, Natalino!”
“And you will learn to read much faster than I can teach you ’Lino, with all the practicings and the journeyings. Perhaps you will even learn to be as clever as my Antonio was, before—” Nonna ended with a sigh instead of more words.
The women and girls were in the side tent, busied about dinner, and Nonna would not finish her sentence in the presence of Antonio’s wife.
“I would rather be our Antonio than—than the King or the principino,”[5] Natale cried helplessly. Then he sat up on the worn grass, and faced them all, tearful but resolute. “I shall not stay here with the priest and go to school, mamá,” he said earnestly. “You shall not leave me behind and take Maria and Pietro and the rest.”
“Perhaps we can persuade Giovanni to leave little Bianco with you, if the good priest does not object,” Nonna whispered in his ear.
“No, I shall go with you,” returned Natale.
“Ah! what is all this?” came suddenly in Giovanni’s gruff, good-natured tones. “What? Natale will not stay? The beautiful little star of the ring will not leave us in the darkness?” And the clown entered the tent and flung himself down, laughing, beside the little boy.
“Hurry with the polenta, Arduina,” he called to his stepdaughter, who had lifted her hot face from the steam of the mush pot to laugh at the man’s rough wit. “The biggest hole yet torn in the tent must be mended this afternoon, and the canvas is almost dry now in this wind. If it had not rained yesterday, and if the wind had not played us such a trick on the very eve of our going, we should have made our fortunes yesterday. A cattle fair does not offer itself every day, with its crowd of country bumpkins who never saw a man in tights. Now, that will do, Natale,” turning to the boy, who was sniffing audibly. “Hours ago it was all decided, and there is nothing more to be said.”
“Then I am not to stay in this horrid place, Giovanni—papá—”