The speed of the dancers slackened like that of a spinning top, and they came to a sudden standstill. Luigi returned to Carina and his place by the fire, and Carlotta got out the hand-organ. All the morning she made the children practice the figures of the dance to music, until they were ready to drop with fatigue. While she prepared the soup for their noon meal they were allowed to rest, but immediately afterwards the donkeys were harnessed again, and to the music of their tinkling bells the little cavalcade moved on.
For some time they travelled over the steep mountain roads without seeing a soul; then they met a girl driving a flock of sheep to pasture. Later they overtook some peasant women walking like queens with great loads of wood on their heads. Beyond them they passed an ox-team, and Beppo whispered to Beppina, “It’s a good sign to meet oxen in the road.” But alas, a moment later they met a priest, mumbling his prayers as he walked. It was a glance of despair that Beppina gave her brother then, for it is very bad luck to meet a priest in the road, as every Tuscan child can tell you.
Nevertheless, all these signs, bad and good, indicated that they were approaching a town, and a few moments later they came
to a stream where women were washing clothes, and the van rumbled across a bridge and into the open square of a small mountain village. In an instant there was great excitement in the town, and all the inhabitants swarmed about the van.
Luigi climbed down from the driver’s seat, with Carina on his shoulder, and loosed the bear’s rope, while Carlotta brought out the organ, and gave the tambourine to the monkey.
“Balla! Balla!” cried Luigi, and Ugolone rising to his hind legs wearily began his clumsy dance. The children, meanwhile, shrank back out of sight in the van.
“She will make us dance like the bear, I know she will,” moaned Beppina, “and I cannot remember the steps!” She crossed herself frantically, and said a prayer to the Virgin, but it was of no avail, for soon Carlotta’s wheedling tones reached their hiding-place.
“Avanti, carissimi,” she called, and, not daring to disobey or even to linger, the children leaped from the back of the van into the centre of a crowd of round-eyed villagers. The children of the Marchese Grifoni dancing in company with a monkey and a bear for the entertainment of an audience of peasants! The humiliation of it was almost more than they could endure, but the Twins did their best, and the moment the performance was over dived into
