'How art thou on the stilts or the slack-rope?' asked the old woman; 'for these other things never gave bread to any one.'
'If I must depend upon the slack-rope, then,' said Gerald, good-humouredly, 'I run a good chance of going supperless to bed.'
'How they neglect them when they're young, and their bones soft and pliant!' said Gaetana sternly. 'What parents are about nowadays I can't imagine. I used to crouch into a flower-pot when I was five years old; ay, and spring out of it too when the Fairy Queen touched the flower!'
Gerald could with great difficulty restrain the burst of laughter this anecdote of her early life provoked.
'Oh, come with us; stay with us,' whispered Marietta in his ear.
'If thou hast been taught the offices, boy,' said Babbo, 'thou deservest an honester life than ours. Leave us, then; go thy ways, and walk in better company.'
'_Corpo del diavolo!_' screamed out the hag. 'It's always so with him. He has nothing but hard words for the trade he lives by.'
'Stay with us; stay with us,' whispered the girl, more faintly.
'Thou mightst have a worse offer, lad; for who can tell what's in thee? I warrant me, thou 'It never be great at jumping tricks,' said Babbo.
'Wilt stay?' said Marietta, as her eyes swam in tears.
'I will,' said Gerald, with a glance that made her cheek crimson.
I am not certain that a great 'Impressario' of Paris or London would have deemed the document which bound Gerald to his new master a very formal instrument. But there was a document. It was written on a fly-leaf of old Babbo's Breviary, and set forth duly that for certain services to be afterward detailed, '_un certo Gherardi_'--so was he called--was to eat, and drink, and be clothed; always providing that there was meat, and drink, and wearables to give him; with certain benefices--small contingent remainders--to accrue when times were prosperous and patrons generous, and all this for the term of a twelvemonth. Donna Gaetana stoutly fought for five years, then three, and then two: but she was beaten in all her amendments, though she argued her case ably. She showed, with a force derived from great experience, that theirs was a profession wherein there was much to learn; that the initial stages developed very few of those gifts which won popular applause; that, consequently, the neophyte was anything but a profitable colleague; and it was only when his education was perfected that he could be expected to repay the cost of his early instruction. 'At the end of a year,' to borrow her own forcible language, 'he 'll have smashed a dozen basins and broken twenty poles, and he 'll just be as stiff in the back as you see him today.'