“I am glad thou art come back to us, Natalino,” she whispered in the softest Italian above the tangled brown curls, while the rest sang and made merry, “and if thy little legs will only grow as straight and as strong as my Antonio’s, and thy heart remain as faithful to old Nonna, the saints forgive me if I care very much whether thou be acrobat or priest!”
For some reason known best to himself, but readily guessed by the clown and the rest of the older members of the circus, the swarthy peddler was not seen in Bagni di Lucca for many a day after. But Natale did not lose his dread of encountering the fierce eyes and the cruel knife until long after the circus troop had taken to the road again.
Nothing in the world could have induced Mrs. Bishop, the English lady at Cutigliano, to touch the money returned with, what was to her, most astonishing promptness and honesty through Leo, one of the musicians.
In the first place, the notes were very dirty, much more so, she was sure, than when she had paid them to the clown a little more than a week before. Secondly, she would not reclaim money which had been once devoted to the cause of civilization and of education. If the “little ingrate” despised his opportunities and had finally returned to his “wallowing in the mire”, let the money which would have bought him for decency and for usefulness go with him. Thirdly—but this was not acknowledged even to Betty—the old lady’s heart had been touched by the tale Luigi the priest had come to tell her on the morning after the flight of the birdling. So her heart was not quite so hard as her words sounded, and she was in truth rather rejoiced, as well as very much relieved in mind, when Leo had arrived to tell of runaway Natale’s return to the troop in safety. Therefore, generously, Mrs. Bishop would not receive the money because it seemed to her no longer her own; surely Giovanni and Elvira and Nonna had kept their part of the bargain in giving up the child, while Natale had not even been consulted in their plan.
The roll of notes was therefore returned by Leo to Giovanni, with the foreign lady’s instructions that the money was to be spent in providing meat for broth for the children so long as it should last. There would still be plenty of cold water always, free as air, for daily baths along the roads of Italy, and Mrs. Bishop hoped that Sora Grazia’s ministrations in that line would not soon be forgotten by Natale, who for one short week had been a scrubbed little lad. (It is safe to say that they were not!)
Along with the money, Mrs. Bishop sent a school primer to Natale, with the admonition that he would at least try to learn to read while jogging up and down the earth and upsetting his stomach in all heathenish sports.
But Madame Cioche and Betty rejoiced in open triumph over Natale’s freedom, to say nothing of the priest Luigi and the wise old gentleman who had in fact unwittingly opened the cage door for flight.
Sora Grazia was a trifle glum for a day or two at finding her pains thrown away upon the sulky little protégé of the foreign lady, but as the month’s pay for his board and lodging had been in advance, and the nearly new clothes and shoes and cap were now thrown into the bargain by Mrs. Bishop, to repay her for her extra trouble, she too soon became content and even pleased with the ending of the rich lady’s scheme.
So the bare front wall of the priest’s house in Cutigliano among the mountains has, as yet, no prospect of being adorned by a memorial tablet to a waif of all outdoors who was willing to be a great man in books and goodness.