“Send them away,” she exclaimed, stopping short.
“Scatta, my children,” said Frispi in English, “go roun’ de corna. I come lata.”
“With your organ?” inquired his expectant youthful followers, to whom an Italian with a monkey and minus an organ partook of the nature of a phenomenon.
“Yes, yes. I got organ,” said the man mendaciously. “Five, six organ. I bring. Go ’long.”
They looked at him as trustingly as if they expected to find musical instruments issuing from his pockets, then went to peep around the corner and listen surreptitiously to the conversation between him and his elegant companion.
“What do you wish?” asked Zilla sharply.
“Oh ze beauty clothes!” exclaimed Frispi spreading his hands over her in delight. Then relapsing into Italian he told her in eager tones of his longing to have her with him. “Could she not leave her fine friends and run away with him?”
“Hold thy tongue,” said Zilla scornfully interrupting him. “I wish no more of thee. Thou must leave this town.”
“No, no, my loved one, not till thou canst go.”
“Thou shalt go alone—at once, never to return,” she said, hissing the words through her pointed white teeth that looked as if they might bite him. “I hate thee and thy poverty; and art thou not a thief?”