Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/298

286 a ring of roguish women to deliver his letter. Lionella scampered through it, reddening with pleasure; she beckoned him with smiles to sit beside her.

"We are making rose-garlands to adorn our pretty heads," she said, laughing. "Come and sit by me, Angioletto, and sing to us. Who knows but what, if you are good, we shall not crown you with one of them?"

It was a great merit of Angioletto's that he always took things and men (especially women) as he found them. Such as they were he could be for the time. He was by no means waxen; elastic rather. Down he plumped, accordingly, cross-legged by his new mistress, and warbled a canzone to the viola which enchanted the lady.

"More, more, more!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Oh, boy, I could have you a prince for less than that! What a throstle-pipe you have!"

It was, as he afterwards found out, of her habit to be for ever at extremes; but just now, not knowing how to take her, he sang on all the better for her praise; and he had her next wriggling in an ecstasy over a trifle he made up on the spur of the moment—a snatch wherein roses and a girl's face (Bellaroba's, be sure) took turns to be dominant. At the end of this pretty piece the Countess Lionella fairly took his own face between her hands, crumpled his lips into a bud and kissed them full. Angioletto coloured, though no one else did. It was evidently quite harmless, and afterwards he was ashamed of his shame.

As it was, a diversion of a different order