The word "macaroni" seemed to catch their coachman's ear, and turning toward them, he said some words in Italian so rapidly that Aunt Caroline hardly understood, and then, urging his horse, drove straight on.
"He said something about 'old men,' and 'eating macaroni,' but I have no idea what he really means, and I do not like the region where he is taking us."
Finally, after many windings, they passed up a street on which the houses were poor, but of a rather better type than those they had seen a short time earlier.
"There must be an institution near by," said Aunt Caroline, after they had met, one after the other, several old men wearing a blue uniform.
This conjecture proved correct, for at the end of the street they came upon a large building, evidently a home for old men.
"Why is the driver so anxious to have us go inside? We really must make him understand. No, no. No, no!" continued Aunt Caroline, and finally, by repeating "No, no," and using gesticulations more emphatic than his own, she made him turn about. But he still continued his pantomime of carrying his hand to his mouth, as if in the act of eating. This he varied by occasionally pointing toward the windows of the houses he was passing, where, as their eyes followed the direction of his finger, Irma and Aunt Caroline saw other blue-coated old men eating at tables close to the window.
"I begin to understand," said Aunt Caroline, "he wished us to give these old men money that they could eat macaroni for us. Now we will let him do what he will. He has some plan."
A moment later he had driven them to an open space at the junction of two streets, where a man was cooking macaroni in a large copper vessel. Two or three little boys who had been following the carriage now stepped up beside the horses, and they, too, made the gesture in imitation of eating, at the same time crying, "_Soldi, soldi_."
"Oh, yes, I recall it all now," said Aunt Caroline, laughing. "It was the same when we were here before." Then she threw some coppers to the little boys, who immediately handed them over to the man at the cooking stall. He, in his turn, gave each a heaped-up plate of macaroni cooked with tomato.
"It would be worth three times the price, though I don't know just what you gave them, Aunt Caroline, to see those boys eat such a quantity, and it all disappeared in an instant."