“Well, go!” she exclaimed then, “and a good journey to you!” But she stood watching him trudge briskly away from her until another curve in the zigzag road hid him from her sight.
“Some stranger’s child!” she muttered to herself, going back to the doorstep. “I have never seen him pass here before, and few there be who pass by without the knowledge of Chiara. Well, I am glad he has his soldi safe in his pocket. May the saints protect and feed my own children when they go a-wandering! You, Beppo! keep your head out of the dust of the road!”
“Mamá, mamá, Beppino is making capitomboli, such as the boy who was here just now made in the circus at Cutigliano, on the day we went with our father to the big tent! Do you not remember?” cried an admiring small sister of Beppo. “See, our Beppo does them even better than the other boy, mamá!”
The woman gave a little start of recollection, and then dismissed the idea which had occurred to her, as impossible—fortunately, perhaps, for Natale.
“Silly girl! The circus people went down the road a week ago to the Bagni, do you not remember? How should the boy be seven days behind? No more capitomboli, I say, Beppo mio, in all this dust!”
“Capitomboli, such as the boy who was here just now made in the circus at Cutigliano.”
Page [142.]
In a carriage, with two good horses and a fine cracking whip behind them, one may drive from Cutigliano down to the Baths of Lucca in the first half of a summer’s day. On two tired slim little legs, one would need much more time to accomplish the journey. Also when one has been for six days imprisoned within stone walls, one does not hurry—if fairly out of danger—along beauteous and fresh-smelling paths of freedom.
Every hour or so after leaving the woman and children at the fountain, Natale stopped for a rest along the way. Sometimes he sat down on a heap of mending stones by the wayside, in company with some stone-breaker hammering away in the shade of his sun screen, a rude lattice of chestnut boughs propped behind the heap of stones.
The monotonous clink of the hammer breaking the sharp-edged stones was usually stayed as the lonely worker turned to chat with the large-eyed child hovering near. Only once or twice was Natale’s cheerful “Buon’ giorno!”[8] returned by an unwelcoming growl or by sour silence. In such cases, the dawdling feet made all haste to pass and seek a resting-place in the shade of some breeze-rustled chestnut tree quite out of sight of the cross stone-breaker.