"I'm glad she's gone," said Deborah. "She made me feel uncanny."
"Nonsense," I laughed. "She's only a queer little girl. Look at Pietro's paintings; they are more wholesome."
The dingy little theatre had once been a stable. Pietro had turned the loft into a gallery, with tiers of benches receding high into the gloom. He had cut off the stall-room with a wooden proscenium. Upon it twined a mastodon of a vine, the like of which no botanist ever beheld. The toy curtain bore, upon its forty-eight square feet of canvas, a representation of a Roman triumph that would have insured Pietro's admission into any Academy with a sense of humor.
It cheered Deborah amazingly, and the audience, which burst in at eight o'clock, caused her to clasp her hands. It was chiefly composed of men—laborers, chestnut venders, and bootblacks, with swarthy skins, gleaming eyes, and gleaming teeth. They rushed, shouting, down the single aisle, sprang over settees, scrambled and pushed to win the seats nearest the stage. In three minutes the theatre was a bewilderment of bobbing heads and active hands, and a tumult of voices and laughter. Not a seat was vacant except those upon our settee. The Italians had respected the presence of strangers. The men in front of us and on either hand turned about to greet the American lady and to smile a welcome.
Deborah returned every smile and every bow. Her eyes were bright with excitement.
"How nice they are! How polite!" she exclaimed. Presently she laid a clinging hand upon my arm.
"How can I ever thank you," she whispered, "for bringing me here!"
I tried to tell her by a look, but her attention was not for me.
"See," she went on, "see the faun!"
A slender boy appeared in the proscenium doorway. His hair clustered about deep red cheeks, and his great dark eyes looked mournfully over the house. I fancied he was seeking someone. The audience hailed him with applause and he descended two or three steps to the street-piano, which served as orchestra, and began to turn the crank. Deborah started, raised eyebrows of dismay, and pressed her hands over her ears. Never before had she heard the Intermezzo from Cavalleria rendered by a street-piano in a twenty by forty foot room.