"Signorino!" Gaspare cried. "I will give her the clock that plays the
'Tre Colori'! Then she will be happy again. Shall I?"
"Si, si. And meet me in the market-place. Then we will eat something and
we will start for home."
The boy darted away towards the watercourse. His heart was light again.
He had something to do for the signora, something that would make her
very happy. Ah, when she heard the clock playing the "Tre Colori"! Mamma
mia!
He tore towards the watercourse in an agony lest he should be too late.
* * * * * Night was falling over the fair. The blue dress and the ear-rings had
been chosen and paid for. The promenade of the beauties in the famous
inherited brocades had taken place with éclat before the church of Sant'
Onofrio. Salvatore had acquired a donkey of strange beauty and wondrous
strength, and Gaspare had reappeared in the piazza accompanied by Amedeo,
both laden with purchases and shining with excitement and happiness.
Gaspare's pockets were bulging, and he walked carefully, carrying in his
hands a tortured-looking parcel.
"Dov'è il mio padrone?" he asked, as he and Amedeo pushed through the
dense throng. "Dov'è il mio padrone?"
He spied Maurice and Maddalena sitting before the ristorante listening to
the performance of a small Neapolitan boy with a cropped head, who was
singing street songs in a powerful bass voice, and occasionally doing a
few steps of a melancholy dance upon the pavement. The crowd billowed
round them. A little way off the "Musica della città," surrounded by a
circle of colored lamps, was playing a selection from the "Puritani." The
strange ecclesiastical chant of the Roman ice venders rose up against the
music as if in protest. And these three definite and fighting
melodies--of the Neapolitan, the band, and the ice venders--detached
themselves from a foundation of ceaseless sound, contributed by the
hundreds of Sicilians who swarmed about the ancient church, infested the
narrow side streets of the village, looked down from the small balconies
and the windows of the houses, and gathered in mobs in the wine-shops and
the trattorie.
"Signorino! Signorino! Look!"
Gaspare had reached Maurice, and now stood by the little table at which
his padrone and Maddalena were sitting, and placed the tortured parcel
tenderly upon it.
"Is that the clock?"
Gaspare did not reply in words, but his brown fingers deftly removed the
string and paper and undressed his treasure.
"Ecco!" he exclaimed.
The clock was revealed, a great circle of blue and white standing upon
short, brass legs, and ticking loudly, "Speranza mia, non piangere,
E il marinar fedele,
Vedrai tornar dall' Africa
Tra un anno queste vele----"