Soap-Bubble Stories Part 4

When little Bethea next visited the hospital, the boy with the crooked leg was just leaving; but his leg was not crooked any longer; his face was bright and healthy, and safely b.u.t.toned up in his coat he carried a shabby old pocket book, in which lay a withered flower, with one word written underneath in large pencilled letters--"_Heartsease_."

A STORY OF SIENA.

CHAPTER I.

The house stands on a hill on the outskirts of Siena, not far from the high red walls that still enclose the town, as entirely as they did in the times long pa.s.sed by, when Siena was the powerful rival of Florence.

Old frescoes, and the stone coats-of-arms of the dead and gone rulers of the place, decorate the great gates; which seem only waiting for a troop of knights and soldiers to pa.s.s through, and with a blast of their bugles awake the ancient inhabitants of the crooked streets, and fill them once more with the picturesque crowds of the middle ages.

We can imagine that the old owners are but lying asleep in their many storied gothic palaces, their vaulted courtyards, and shady loggias; ready to rub their eyes and come out as they hear the well-known sounds ringing across the wide piazza.

But the knights never come, and the old people go on sleeping; and the new people walk about the streets, and haggle at the market, and drive their country carts with the great patient white oxen, and crowd on Sunday up the broad Cathedral steps to kneel in the dim light before the lighted altar, as generations have done before them.

All round the town stretches the open country. Low sandy hills dotted with olive and cyprus trees, melting into a blue sweep of mountains; and about a mile from one of the gates stands the rambling white house with closed shutters in which Maddalena, the housekeeper, lived alone with her two grandchildren.

She was a kind old woman and fond of the twins, who had been left orphans when they were mere babies, but she often thought that surely no grandmother had ever been plagued before, as she was plagued by Tuttu and Tutti.

"When they were infants it was easy enough," she would declare to a sympathizing neighbour. "Give them a fig or something to play with, and they were perfectly happy; but at times now I am tempted to wish they had no legs, what with accidents and mischief.--Not that they're not fine children, and may be a comfort to my old age, but it's a hara.s.sing thing, waiting."

It was certainly a fact that Tuttu and Tutti were constantly in mischief; and yet their curly black heads, red cheeks, and great brown eyes, were so attractive, that people--even those whose property had been seriously injured by them--treated them leniently, and let them off with a scolding.

The twins were always repentant after one of their misfortunes, and made serious promises of amendment; but at the next temptation they forgot all their good resolutions, and never remembered them until they were in disgrace again.

Grandmother Maddalena devised numerous punishments for the children, such as tacking a cow's head cut out of red stuff, on their backs, when they had teazed Aunt Eucilda's cow--or tieing them up by one leg, with a long cord to the table, for stone-throwing; but Tuttu and Tutti were incorrigible.

They wept loudly, embraced their grandmother, made all kinds of promises--and the next day went off to do just the same things all over again.

There was only one person who had any influence over them, Father Giacomo, the priest of the little Church of Sancta Maria del Fiore, close by. He had known them from the time they were helpless babies in swaddling clothes, till they grew to be mischievous creatures in homespun trousers; and in every stage of character and clothing he had borne with them, taught them, played with them, and loved them, until the _Padre_ had become their idea of all that was wise and good, and they would do more for the sake of pleasing him than for anyone in the world, not even excepting their grandmother.

Every Sunday afternoon Father Giacomo called to take them for a walk, the one only sure way of keeping them out of mischief; and sometimes to their great delight they would go along the olive-bordered road to Siena, returning in the evening to the _Padre's_ house, in time to have a good game with the two cats Neri and Bianca, who had lived there since their infancy, as important members of the household.

On their eighth birthday, Tuttu and Tutti a.s.sured their grandmother that they really intended to reform. They promised faithfully to give up tree climbing, fis.h.i.+ng in the pond, and many other favourite sports, and commenced to dig in the piece of kitchen garden under their grandmother's direction. In fact so zealous did Tuttu become that he borrowed a knife from one of the farm labourers who was vine pruning, and cut the whole of the branches off a vine near the house, ending with a terrible gash in his own thumb, which necessitated his being carried in an ox-cart to the hospital in Siena, supported in his grandmother's arms; while Tutti walked behind weeping bitterly, under the impression that the doctor would certainly kill Tuttu this time for his carelessness.

Tuttu was not killed, however. The cut was sewn up, while the ox-cart with its good-natured driver waited outside, and the depressed party returned home, grandmother Maddalena clasping her little earthen pot full of hot wood ashes, which even in the excitement of the accident she had not forgotten to take with her, for it was a cold day in early springtime.[A]

[A] A _scaldino_, carried about by all the Siennese women, and used in the house instead of a fire.

Tutti was allowed to ride home in the cart, and sat holding Tuttu's hand, his eyes round with solemnity, the traces of tears still on his cheeks.

That night he went to sleep with his arm thrown round Tuttu's neck, his curly head resting against his shoulder--and though Tuttu was cramped and uncomfortable, and his thumb pained him, he remained heroically still until he also dropped asleep, and the two little brothers dreamed peacefully of pleasant things until the morning.

CHAPTER II.

"Well, thank Heaven! those children are safe for the present," said Maddalena, as she sat on a stone bench in the sun, with the dark clipped cyprus hedge behind her.

To the right rose the stuccoed _Palazzo_, with its great stone coat-of-arms hanging over the entrance, and inside, a peep of the shady courtyard, with green tubs of orange trees, and the twinkle of a fountain that shot up high into the suns.h.i.+ne, and fell with a splash into a marble basin.

Maddalena, in her broad Tuscan hat with its old-fas.h.i.+oned black velvet--for she would never give in to the modern innovations of flowers and ostrich feathers--held her distaff in her hand, and as she twisted the spindle and drew out the thread evenly, she thought with satisfaction of the improved behaviour of the twins.

Ever since the accident they had been different creatures, and she wondered how long it would be before they could be apprenticed to some useful trade, and begin to bring in a little money.

"When I can get hold of the Padre alone I'll ask him about it; but he really does spoil these boys till I don't know which tyrannizes over him most--the two cats or the two children!"

Maddalena's reflections were suddenly interrupted at this point by the appearance of her grandchildren from the back of the yew hedge by which she was sitting--Tuttu on all fours, neighing like a horse, with Tutti on his back, blowing a clay whistle.

"We're only doing 'cavalry,' grandmother," gasped Tuttu, with a scarlet face, attempting to prance in a military manner.

"Cavalry!" cried Maddalena, starting up. "Those children will be the death of me. Cavalry indeed! Look at your trousers, you disgrace. All the knees yellow sand, and the elbows in holes!" and she seized her distaff and waved it at them threateningly.

To avoid his grandmother's arm, Tuttu hastily scrambled under the stone seat, but his unfortunate rider thrown off his balance, fell head first against the earthen _scaldino_, which was broken, and its ashes scattered on the path in all directions.

When Tuttu, lying flat with only his head visible, saw this terrible misfortune; he crawled out from his hiding-place, and taking Tutti's hand helped him to get up, and stood courageously in front of his grandmother.

"It was all my fault, grandmother. Don't scold him! I made him do it, and I'm so sorry," he said, with a quiver in his voice, but Maddalena was too angry to listen to him. She had thrown her distaff on the ground, and was picking up the pieces of the yellow _scaldino_ to see if it could possibly be fitted together again.

"Go in both of you to bed," she called out without looking up, "and don't let me see either of you again to-day! Just when I had a moment's peace too, thinking you were at the Padre's. It really is too much."

Tutti burst into loud sobs of terror and remorse, but Tuttu took him by the hand and, without speaking, led him away to the house.

"Why don't you cry, too, Tuttu?" asked Tutti, stopping his tears to look in astonishment at his brother.

"I'm too old," said Tuttu. "Grandmother's quite right, we do behave badly to her." And that was the beginning of a new era for Tuttu.

The next day as soon as he was awake, he began to think seriously over any possible way by which he could earn enough money to buy a new _scaldino_. He dressed hurriedly and ran off to talk it over with Father Giacomo, and the result of the conference was a long but kind lecture of good advice, and permission to weed in the Padre's garden for the sum of one halfpenny for a large basketful.

Tuttu danced about with delight. "Why, I shall earn the money in no time at that rate," he cried, "and I'll buy the best _scaldino_ in Siena!"

He felt that he must commence work immediately, and in the evening he staggered into Father Giacomo's, with a scarlet face, carrying a great hamper of green stuff.

When he had a little recovered himself, he unfolded to his old friend another plan he had thought of during the day, which he was quite sure would please his grandmother.

"I've got a broken _fiasco_ that the gardener's given me," he said, "and I and Tutti mean to put a bean each into it every day we are really good. Then, at the end of the month--a whole month, mind!--we might take it up to grandmother."

Father Giacomo highly approved of this idea, and encouraged the children by every means in his power; so that, for more than three weeks, the beans went in regularly and the halfpence in Tuttu's store, which he kept like a magpie hidden away in a crack of the woodwork, increased rapidly.

Old Maddalena had long ago forgiven the children, for though she was often angry with them, she loved them really. She guessed that Tuttu was determined to replace the _scaldino_, as on several occasions he had not been able to resist a veiled hint on the subject; but she pretended perfect ignorance, and the two little boys might whisper and laugh to their heart's content--it was quite certain she never heard anything!

One soft evening in May, Tuttu came into the Palazzo garden in a state of great excitement. His last basket of weeds had been handed in to Father Giacomo, and the entire sum for the _scaldino_ lay in small copper pieces in a crumpled scarlet pocket handkerchief.

"It's all here," whispered Tuttu, one great smile stretching across his good-tempered little face. "Every penny of it!--Shall it be brown or yellow? It must have a pattern. We'll go into Siena to-morrow and buy it."

"To Siena!" said Tutti in an awe-struck whisper, "We've never been there by ourselves."