"What do you want?" a muffled voice came from the chimney. Beppo sawed the air.
"Don't you play the fool up there, my boy, don't you do it! That's as foul as the grave, that chimney is. I'll have ye on my soul as long as I live, and I can ill afford it, for I've a queasy conscience in my black shell." He seemed to be treading on pins.
He was answered, "We will talk of your conscience and its shell when I come back. Take off my shoes, will you?"
A neat leg was pushed into the fireplace; then another. Beppo did the office, meek as an acolyte. Then he sighed, for the legs drew up the chimney and vanished in dust.
"There goes a lad of spirit to his gloomy end," murmured brokenly the sweep, as he looked at the little red shoes in his hand. "I would not have had that come to pass for twenty gold ducats. But, Lord! who'd 'a thought it of a Court spark, that he should be as good as his word? Not I, used to Courts as a man may be." He fell to scratching his head.
"Hey, hey!" he cried, as there was a prodigious scuffling up the chimney. "Now he strangles, now he strangles!" A shower of soot came down. Beppo flacked about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an awed whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the chimney were still very lively. "Eh, there he is again," said the old sweep. "What now?" Down came a rat, squeaking for its life, then three in succession, very silent because their necks were wrung. "This is better than a cat any day of the seven," said Sor Beppo. "What a diamond of a poet! He should be crowned with laurel-twigs if I were Duke Borso in all his glory. Being but Beppo the sweep, he shall be free of my mystery the moment he's free of my chimney-stack."
He could await Angioletto's coming now with equal mind. The lad had approved himself. I leave you to judge of the welcome he got when, breathless, scratched, and sable as the night, he showed his white teeth at the door. Beppo, in fact, fell weeping on his neck. By this simple device Angioletto was enabled to keep his word, and Bellaroba to find him black but comely.