“Hurry, then,” said Beppo, brightening a little, as Beppina flung him a butterfly kiss and ran back to her room. She threw on her clothes in two minutes, fastened her long black hair with a hair-pin, and appeared again in the corridor just as Beppo
returned from the kitchen with a pan of crumbs in his hand.
The two children then quietly opened the door which led from the Grifoni apartment into the public hall of the old palace and crept silently down the long, dark stone stairs to the ground floor, where Pietro, the porter, lived with his wife and six children. Pietro opened the door of his own apartment and stepped into the public hall just as the two dark figures came stealthily down the last flight. Beppo was certainly in a mood for mischief that morning, for when he saw Pietro he crept softly up behind him as he was buttoning the last button of his livery, and suddenly shouted “Boom!” right in his ear!
Pietro thought it was one of his own children who had played this saucy trick. “Santa Maria!” he cried, wheeling about with his hands out to catch and punish the offender. “Come here, thou thorn in the eye!” Then, as he saw the children of the Marchese grinning at him out of the shadows, his hand went up in a salute instead. “Buona Pasqua, Donna Beppina!” he cried, “and you too, Don Beppo! Why are you about at this hour in the morning scaring honest people out of their wits?”
“Buona Pasqua, Pietro,” laughed the Twins. “We are going out in the garden, and we want you to open the door for us.”
No one but the gardener and the members of the Grifoni family ever went into the garden, which lay at the back of the palace, for the tenants who occupied other portions of the ancient building were not allowed to use it, and the Marchese Grifoni lived in Florence only during the winter months. The rest of the year—and the children thought much the best part of it—was spent in their beautiful vine-covered villa in the hills near Padua.
Pietro selected a key from the jingling bunch which he carried at his belt, and opened the old carved door. It was a charming sight which greeted their eyes as the door swung back on its rusty hinges. The garden was small, with a high wall all about it, over which ivy spread a mantle of green. In the middle of the space a fountain splashed and bubbled, and the garden borders were gay with yellow daffodils, blue chicory, and white Florentine lilies. There were other delights also in the Grifoni garden, for in the fountain lived Garibaldi, a turtle of great age and dignity, and in the chinks of the walls were lizards which liked
nothing better than to be tickled with straws as they lay basking in the sunshine.