“Not to me,” I said, “but to some one I like—”
“Have as you will,” he stated, “but play again, for me—”
And I did. And as I did, I thought of how Sam had looked when he heard me practise that very same music at the Pension Dante. He had said it was beautiful, and it had helped me.
Friendship is a wonderful thing!
CHAPTER TWENTY
A COUNTRY WEDDING AND THE COMING OF SPRING
A great deal happened in that slice of time which carried us from January into spring, although during that interval we felt as if we were going along almost entirely on the level. You never really do see the things that happen—not well—until you can look at them over your shoulder. I realize now that there was lots of excitement, and that there was really a good deal of abrupt change, but I didn’t see it then.
In the first place, we all went to Beata’s wedding in February, and I never did have a better time.
Her family, who numbered fourteen—with her father and mother, and Grandmother and Grandfather, and nine brothers and sisters—lived in a four room house out in the country past the Cascine, which is the Park in Florence where fashionable people and those who are trying very hard to become fashionable, drive each afternoon. I didn’t like it; it didn’t seem very foreign or Italian. But to go on with my story, an American—or most Americans—would have hesitated about inviting people to a wedding party in a four room house that was simply crammed with children, not to mention the sick hen and the sheep with a broken leg, but it didn’t bother Beata! No, sir, she meant to have a party, and she had it, and I thought her asking every one she wanted fine. She said, through Miss Julianna, who interpreted, “You know we are poor, but we have great love in our hearts for you, and would like to share what we have with you. And will you do us the great honor to come to my wedding, hear the mass that will follow, and then eat with us the grand dinner at the house of my dearly loved father?”
Every one accepted, and on the morning of the fourteenth—which was the date Leslie had chosen for Beata’s wedding in honor of a certain Saint who swells the mails on this day each year—we all started out toward Beata’s home. Leslie, who was increasingly kind and thoughtful, had hired a big motor which would, with a little squeezing, hold us all; and into this piled Miss Julianna, Miss Meek (she wore the purple velvet with the green buttons again) Miss Bannister who had never set foot in a motor before and was pale from fear (her fright lasted about a block, and then she got so jazzy that we almost had to tell her not to rock the boat) Viola, with a wide black band around her arm (Leslie had suggested that to save Viola’s buying new black clothes) and Leslie, Mr. Hemmingway and myself.
The riding out was great fun, for the day was fine, and Miss Meek and Miss Bannister and Mr. Hemmingway were having such a good time that we were all infected with it.