Natale held his breath with horror. One hundred francs lost! And he not at hand to hear of it, to help look for the money, among the very first? He could not ask Olga how it had happened, because his heart was almost too disappointed and sore for words. He sat down on the wall, with his back toward the tent, and waited for her to tell all about the loss, although he was not at all certain that she would condescend to do so. In fact, she said not a word more, but stood in front of Natale, wondering not a little at his unusual quiet.

“You are sulky!” she exclaimed finally, “and Giovanni is very angry with you. So am I, for I had to feel Il Duca’s pulse, and I did not like it at all. Suppose he had kicked me, seeing that it was not you.”

“Il Duca was dead!” Natale retorted, with a twinkle in his eye, if only Olga could have seen it. “He would not know you from me!”

“Dead!” cried Olga. “I believe you truly do think that, when you set up your crying, Natale; really I did not do it half so well as you,” she confessed honestly.

“But you ‘wheel’ much better than I do,” Natale conceded with ready generosity in return.

“Il Duca did not shut his eyes at all,” Olga went on, nodding assent to Natale’s remark, “and I am sure he winked at me, Natale, just to frighten me. It did not take me long to feel his pulse! But where were you, Natalino, all the time? Nonna said she was afraid some of the peasants had stolen you and carried you off, when Niero and Bianco came home without you.”

“As if they would have let anybody steal me! Olga, I went to sleep in the church, waiting for the saints to come back, and when I waked it was dark, almost as dark as this!”

“Oho! then you must have been in the church when Arduina and I went in to look at the saints. Arduina said—but you must not dare to tell anybody—she said that she did not believe there were any bones under the saints’ fine velvet robes because San Lorenzo had a hand of pink wax, and the rest of him looked rather stuffed. But do not tell Nonna, Natale!”

“Arduina is very wicked,” said Natale, but he laughed with Olga, and then felt much better, and as if he could ask about the losing of the money.

They were in a little nook to themselves, behind the wagon, and no one heeded them.

“Ecco! it was this way,” Olga began, charmed to be the first to recount the misfortune to Natale, who was usually behind none in his knowledge of the affairs of the company. “Just when Giovanni was going in to do the clown in the first dance on the rope, the Signor Barbera, the stable man, came behind the big tent with his bill for keeping the horses, and Giovanni took the big pocketbook out of the pocket of his coat—”

“Yes, I know which pocket,” Natale interposed. “I saw him put the money there this morning.”

“Well, the signor could not make the change, so he told Giovanni it was all right, and any time would do, and then Antonio rang the bell for Giovanni, and he just put the pocketbook back in his coat and hung the coat on the nail in the little tent, and hurried on the black coat, and went into the ring.”

“Yes, and then?” asked Natale breathlessly.

“When he came back, he saw his coat on the ground, and he knew he had hung it up. ‘How comes my coat on the ground?’ he said, very loud indeed, and your mamá told him he must have put it there himself. But he did not hear her, because he was shaking the coat and feeling in the pocket,—but there was nothing there!

“We made a great fuss about it,” Olga ended, shrugging her shoulders and throwing up her hands, “but what was the use?”

Natale was silent with dismay. A hundred francs meant so much. It was all that they had made during the ten days’ stay at Cutigliano, and now it was gone, in a moment.

“The stable man?” he questioned in a distressed tone of voice, and very low.

“No, Giovanni said it could not have been the signor. He is a rich man and honest, everybody says.”

So subdued were they all over the trouble of the afternoon that not even Elvira thought it worth while to scold the quiet boy who presently slipped in among the little crowd of players in the tent, deep in fruitless discussion over their grievous loss. They had had a crowded tent that afternoon, and the receipts had been so good that this evening would have been one of rejoicing if only the money for the labors of the ten other days and nights had been again safe in Giovanni’s pocket. There was not the slightest clew to the thief, as no stranger had been known to enter the tent, and Giovanni had even interviewed the Signor Barbera from outside the doorway. It had been necessary to be on the lookout for possible thieving, as the field was crowded all the afternoon with strange peasants, attracted by the band music and the big yellow tent, and by peddlers with their wares. One very decent-looking peddler had begged pretty, vain Arduina to look at his beautiful jewelry and ribbons, but she had refused him entrance very reluctantly, and Giovanni himself had noticed how patiently and decorously the man had turned away. He had worn a red fez cap over his long black hair, and his bushy black beard had reached nearly to his waist.

“I saw him!” Emilio, one of the musicians exclaimed, “and his legs were as crooked as Pietro’s, only they bent out at the knee instead of in!” There was a laugh at this sally, but Pietro frowned and muttered something about Emilio’s having little right to criticize the legs of others.

“I met such a man as I came out of the church in the crowd,” said Nonna, hastening to speak that a dispute might be avoided. “He walked very well notwithstanding his poor, bent legs, and he asked me if he were too late to get a glimpse of the blessed relics. A politer man I never saw, though Tito was afraid of him, and began to cry when the man snapped his fingers at him.”

Poor Natale felt so left out in the cold with this talk that he could not bear it long, and was just about to creep away, down to his corner in the wagon, when a strange hand lifted a corner of the tent flap, and a strange voice inquired for “Il piccolo Natale.”

“Some ladies up at the house there have a little present for you all,” the black-coated Italian butler of the boarding-house announced, peering in upon the group gathered about the sputtering lamp inside, “but they wish to send it down by the boy, Natale.”

Then Natale was himself again, and without demur or bashfulness presented himself to the servant.

“It is well you turned up in time, Natalino,” said the clown, giving him a little shove toward the dignified butler waiting just outside. “Perhaps Olga would not have done, in this case. Off with you to the forestieri[4] above!”

Many a boy would have been abashed at finding himself the center of such a group as awaited Natale in the hallway of the house in the garden. But Natale was too well accustomed to an array of faces fixed upon him to make the least show of bashfulness. The lady of the house, whose pleasant face he knew very well, laid her hand on his shoulder and asked him kindly in Italian if anything had been heard of the money lost that afternoon, and her soft, dark eyes looked sympathetically into his own.

“No, signora, and my papá says we shall never see a soldo of it again,” was Natale’s prompt answer.

“Ask him if they have any idea of the person who stole it,” Betty Bishop suggested in English, and Madame Cioche did so. Natale’s answer to this was more expressive than polite perhaps, for without words he simply raised his shoulders as high as possible, pressing his elbows against his sides, and spreading his hands wide to indicate the complete ignorance of his people as to the coward who had taken their hard-earned money. And the drawn-down corners of his mouth so changed the expression of his face that one would hardly have known him.

“Who would have believed the child could make himself so ugly,” Mrs. Bishop exclaimed. “Have you no tongue, boy, to answer properly?”

But as English words were far less intelligible to Natale than Caffero’s whinny, or Niero’s bark, he only looked up into Madame Cioche’s face and smiled.

“There! it is a bonny little face after all,” said that lady, “and now shall we give him the money and send him away?”

“No, let me speak to him first,” demanded Mrs. Bishop, “and you, Mrs. Choky, must interpret. Ask him if he likes to be a wicked little circus boy.”

“Aunty!” gasped Betty.

“Never mind, I have a reason for my question, Betty. Hush, what does he say?”

“Do you like to play in the circus, dear?” asked Mrs. Cioche’s kind voice, in Italian.

Natale’s eyes shone.

“Ah, yes, signora! And when I am a man, I shall be another Antonio Bisbini.”

“He says he likes it very much, Mrs. Bishop,” was the interpretation.

“Already corrupted, poor boy, and so young!” the old lady sighed, while Betty laughed outright.

“Ask him if he would not like better to have some nice clothes, and go to school, and grow up to be a decent man some day, Mrs. Choky.” That lady hesitated a little before putting this question into Italian.

“What does she say to me?” Natale asked, his brown eyes twinkling as he looked from one to the other, his teeth showing white between his red lips. Natale’s was a wide, good-natured mouth, very prone to laugh upon small provocation.

“She wants to know if you would not like to go to school, and learn to read and write,” said Madame Cioche.

“And leave the circo?” Natale asked with a gasp.

“Yes, you could not go to school unless you should stop in one place, you know.”

“And not travel about with the horses and wagon any more, and leave Nonna?”

“Of course, Natale. But she is only asking you about it, carino, so do not look so troubled.”

Natale laughed then, and happily.

“She wanted to find out how much I love the circo!” he exclaimed. “Please tell her, signora. You know, how we all love the circo!”

“I think I do, Natale. He does not want to go to school, Mrs. Bishop,” turning to the eager old lady, “because he loves his life with the circus and his own people too much.”

“And he does not wish to leave his grandmother,” chimed in Betty who had very cleverly picked up a good deal of Italian during a winter and summer in Italy, and all grandmothers are Nonnas in that land.

Mrs. Bishop was silent for a moment, her gaze taking in every detail of Natale’s little figure standing sturdily before her, dusty shoes, and rough peasant leggings, velveteen trousers, faded blue blouse, and rumpled curls, with the old hat held in one sun-burned hand. His face was not so clean as usual now, and there were tired circles about his eyes. It had been a long, exciting summer’s day.

“Children—especially boys—do not know what is best for themselves,” she said presently, bending her brows, but not in the least frightening Natale, “and I am not going to give up my plan, for this baby’s nonsense. Why, he cannot be over eight years old, at the most.”

“Here, Natale,” said Madame Cioche, judging that the interview might well be concluded, and handing the boy a small packet. “Take this to your papá, and tell him that the ladies and gentlemen in my house have heard of the loss of the money, and are sending him thirty-five francs as a little present. Can you carry it safely?”

Again Natale’s sweet smile broke over his face, but he only nodded happily in reply, tucking the money away in the bosom of his blouse.

“Ask him how long they are going to stay,” Mrs. Bishop called after Madame Cioche, who was going to the gate with Natale.

“He says that the sindaco—the mayor—has offered them the use of the field for another week,” Madame Cioche said, her eyes glowing, as she returned to the hall. “I am glad of that, as the poor creatures will need all they can make here, now.”

“I call it a sort of punishment, their losing the money when playing on Sunday,” Mrs. Bishop said severely, and one or two other English ladies nodded their approval of this speech. “And I think the whole business wrong and that it ought to be discouraged. I was not at all sure about the propriety of giving my francs to your little collection, Mrs. Choky.”

“Would it have been more Christian to have let them suffer, perhaps for food, and the poor beasts too?” the hostess asked, pausing on her way through the hall.

“But surely you think circusing wrong and unchristian?” the disputative old lady exclaimed.

“Aunty, do be quiet,” cried Betty warmly. “I am sure you ought not to dispute ‘on Sunday’! Besides,” she added, as everybody laughed, and two or three softly applauded, “they make their living that way, and we cannot change them into farmers, or preachers. But I think it is always wrong not to help honest people who are in trouble.”

“If they are honest,” Mrs. Bishop remonstrated, but under her breath, this time, for Madame Cioche’s eyes were sparkling, and she seemed waiting to speak.

“Those poor creatures down there deserve nothing but praise,” she said stoutly; “they are quiet folks, who teach their children obedience and keep themselves remarkably clean and mended. If they make their living in a way we do not approve, we cannot change them, as Miss Betty says, but we can feed them when they are hungry, and that seems to me not ‘unchristian’!”

“I am afraid she has a little temper,” said Mrs. Bishop, as their hostess went upstairs.

“A temper I like!” exclaimed a gentleman who had before kept silent, looking up from his book. “But do you still think of carrying out your plan, Mrs. Bishop?”

“If possible, certainly,” was the reply, while Betty, shaking her head, walked out into the garden. There, under the stars, she stood looking down upon the tent in the field. There was no wind, and the heavens were fair, so the canvas had not been furled.

“I should like it myself,” she murmured. “What a fascinating life to live! Camping out the year round in Italy, with no troublesome dressing four times a day, no tiresome table-d’hôte dinners at night. But after all I should not like to be that girl,—Arduina, they call her. Of course, Aunty is right about the rope dancing and other ‘circusing’ on Sunday, only she need not be quite so fussy over what we certainly cannot help. Poor Natale! how disturbed he did look when Madame Cioche asked him about going to school!”