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Lucia ran around the house and off to the sunny slope where she had left Beppi a few hours before. She saw the flock of goats grazing, and called, "Beppino mio, where are you?" No one answered her. She hurried on, believing him to have fallen asleep. "Beppi!" she shouted, "I have something exciting to tell you. Stop hiding from me." She waited, but still no answer came.
Now we will not look so like a deserted place when the King comes." "Oh, perhaps some of them can give me news of Beppino," Lucia exclaimed, forcing her way through the crowd. Almost the first person she saw as she ran down the road was Maria's mother. She was walking along beside several other women, and with a start Lucia realized that she looked thin and wan.
Where is Beppi?" she cried. Garibaldi did not exactly reply, but she stepped a little to one side, and Lucia saw Beppino curled up on a bed of dry leaves sheltered and snug from the storm, and sleeping quite as contentedly as he did on the mattress in the attic at home. Lucia ran to him and shook him.
My mother came from your beautiful Napoli, and Nana, that is my grandmother, says I inherited my foolish love of gay clothes from her. Nana does not like gay clothes, but my father always liked me to wear them." "Then your mother is dead too?" Roderigo asked respectfully. "When I was a little girl, and when Beppino was a tiny baby. Beppi is my little brother," Lucia explained.
Though she persisted in her determination that her grandmother sleep in state in the best bed, she herself preferred a simple and softer resting place. "Tell me a story," Beppi demanded; "not about fairies and silly make believes, but about soldiers." "But there are no pretty stories about soldiers, Beppino mio," Lucia protested. "Who wants pretty stories!" Beppi replied scornfully.
If you heard what I said just now about the dream, you must not think that I don't want to go back to the cottage I do, and I want so much to see my Beppino and Nana again only " "Tell me about that 'only' Lucia," the Captain said gently. "That is what I want to hear, and then perhaps I will have something to tell you." "Oh, it is nothing but silliness," Lucia protested, "how can it matter?"
All during her long journey, and her stay in strange villages, she had thought of nothing but Lucia in the hands of the enemy, and she was nearly crazy with relief and joy to find her safe again. At last Lucia quieted her. "Where is Beppino?" she asked, "surely he is with you?" Something in the straw of the wagon moved, and the old driver pointed his whip at a mop of black hair, and laughed.
For an instant Lucia's eyes danced with happiness, but it was only for an instant, then her face fell. "Oh, I would like that Captain, so very much," she said, "but I could not leave Beppino and Nana." Captain Riccardi looked at her in silence for a moment, then he said slowly, "Of course, you couldn't. I forgot them for the moment. But of course I meant to include them in the invitation.
I am very fond of Beppino already. We had quite a chat that day in the cave." "Oh, but you don't mean it!" Lucia jumped up excitedly. "To live with you and Nana and Beppi and Garibaldi in a garden, oh! but of course, it is not so, and I shall presently wake up." "Wake up in the little white cottage and milk the goats and trudge to town with the heavy pails?" the Captain said.
When the soldiers had climbed out of sight into the mountains, Maria walked slowly back to find her mother, and Lucia after a hurried good-by ran home to tell Nana and Beppino the news. She was far more worried over the possible order to evacuate than she would admit. As their cottage was the farthest north on the road, it would be the nearest to the Austrian guns.
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