“Natalino!” the old woman exclaimed, and, at the word, Natale scrambled to his feet.
“I am ready! Where am I to go?” he asked hurriedly, preparing to creep up the bank. But Nonna only laughed and reached down a helping hand to the child, as he clutched at the long grass for support.
“Come and eat your polenta,” she said, when Natale stood at her side, the dogs panting close by. “I suppose they have saved you a bite. Why did you run away? Though, as for that, you were not missed in all this hurly-burly of arriving. Now, Niero, stand on your hind legs and beg. See, Tito is fretting for you to do it—”
“But we haven’t a bone or a crust of bread for him, Nonna,” Natale pleaded. “See how sadly his eyes look at you. Giovanni always gives him a bone.”
“There! take to your legs then, poor thing!” Nonna cried in a friendly way to the hungry dog. “Perhaps to-morrow there will be a bone. Who knows?”
Natale ran off toward the wagon, followed by the patient animals, who perhaps were well assured that he was going to share with them his own scanty heap of polenta.
The brown house on wheels leaned slightly inward against the stone wall for security, as the hill’s incline was steep at this point. The door opened directly upon the top of the wall, which formed a broad and convenient doorstep, reached from the ground by a short ladder. About the wagon and in the field close by everybody was busy.
The great canvas of the tent had been unpacked from the top of the wagon, and the two women sat on the ground patching the holes and thin places worn in it by long use. Some of the men were making trips back and forth from wagon and field, carrying sections of board for inclosing the ring. These were to be set up in their places by and by, when Antonio should have finished marking off the circle on the grass, with the hole in the center for the tent pole. There was nothing, as yet, for the children to do but loll in the shadow of the wagon, asleep or awake, and chatter among themselves.
As Natale and the dogs drew near, Elvira, the boy’s mother, looked up from her stitching and clapped her hand to her forehead on seeing them.
“Natale! I had forgotten the child. Little pest, where have you been, away from us all, and your dinner? One would think you had friends in the town and had been taking your polenta in grander houses than ours here.”