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He would, of course, be much older now than his portrait. Then she watched Angiolino cutting the corn, and learned how to tie the swathes together. She was occupied in this useful employment when the noise of wheels made them both stop and look over the wall. "Here's the padrone!" cried the boy. "Oh, he is old!" said Goneril; "he is old and brown, like a coffee-bean."
Angiolino!" "Sissignora," murmured the boy. "Tell me about Signor Graziano." "He is our padrone; he is never here." "But he is coming to-day. Wake up, Angiolino. I tell you he is on the way!" "Between life and death there are so many combinations," drawled the boy, with Tuscan incredulity and sententiousness. "Ah!" cried the girl, with a little shiver of impatience. "Is he young?" "Chè!"
"And now, since Gonerilla is no longer a stranger," added Madame Petrucci, "we will leave her to the rustic society of Angiolino while we show Miss Hamelyn our orangery." "And conclude our business!" said Bridget Prunty. One day, when Goneril, much browner and rosier for a week among the mountains, came in to lunch at noon, she found no signs of that usually regular repast.
She smiled sweetly, and then again became Zerlina. Goneril cut her lunch, and took it out of doors to share with her companion, Angiolino. He was harvesting the first corn under the olives, but at noon it was too hot to work. Sitting still there was, however, a cool breeze that gently stirred the sharp-edged olive-leaves.
At this announcement Signor Angiolino gave me a look of unfeigned surprise; he imagined that I was jesting. "Masters of prisons," he rejoined, "who keep shop, have a natural horror of an abstemious captive." "That may be; I don't drink it." "I am sorry for you, sir; you will feel solitude twice as heavily."
One day Goneril was out with her friend. "Are the peasants very much afraid of you, signore?" she asked. "Am I such a tyrant?" counter-questioned the signorino. "No; but they are always begging me to ask you things. Angiolino wants to know if he may go for three days to see his uncle at Fiesole." "Of course" "But why, then, don't they ask you themselves? Is it they think me so cheeky?"
"To be old and good is better than youth with malice," suggested Angiolino, by way of consolation. "I suppose so," acquiesced Goneril. Nevertheless she went in to dinner a little disappointed. The signorino was not in the house; he had gone up to the villa; but he had sent a message that later in the evening he intended to pay his respects to his old friends.
"In England, where there's no sun, there's plenty of shade and here, where the sun is like a mustard-plaster on one's back, the leaves are all set edgewise on purpose that they shan't cast any shadow!" Angiolino made no answer to this intelligent remark. "He is going to sleep again!" cried Goneril, stopping her lunch in despair. "He is going to sleep, and there are no end of things I want to know.
"Am I such a tyrant?" counter-questioned the signorino. "No; but they are always begging me to ask you things. Angiolino wants to know if he may go for three days to see his uncle at Fiesole." "Of course." "But why, then, don't they ask you themselves? Is it they think me so cheeky?" "Perhaps they think I can refuse you nothing." "Che! In that case they would ask Madame Petrucci."
"Is he old, then?" "Neppure!" "What is he like? He must be something." "He's our padrone," repeated Angiolino, in whose imagination Signor Graziano could occupy no other place. "How stupid you are!" exclaimed the young English girl. "May be," said Angiolino stolidly. "Is he a good padrone? do you like him?" "Rather!"
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