Pipa, in her motherly heart looking out, blesses little Gigi—­a chubby child blackened by the sun—­to see him sitting so meek and good beside his brother.  Angelo is a naughty boy.  Pipa does not love him so well as Gigi.  Perhaps this is the reason Angelo is so ill-furnished in point of clothes.  His patched and ragged trousers are hitched on with a piece of string.  Shirt he has none; only a little dingy waistcoat buttoned over his chest, on which lies a silver medal of the Madonna.  Angelo’s arms are bare, his face mahogany-color, his head a hopeless tangle of colorless hair.  But Angelo has a pair of eyes that dance, and a broad, red-lipped mouth, out of which two rows of white teeth shine like pearls.  Angelo has just burnt his fingers picking a chestnut out of the ashes.  He turns very red, but he is too proud to cry.  Angelo’s hands and feet are so hard he does not feel the pointed rocks that break the turf in the forest, nor does he fear the young snakes, as plenty as lizards, in the warm nooks.  All yesterday Angelo had run up and down to look for chestnuts, on his naked feet.  He dared not mount into the trees, for that would be stealing; but he leaped, and skipped, and slid when a russet-coated chestnut caught his eye.  Gigi was with him, trusted to his care by Pipa, with many abjurations and terrible threats of future punishment should he ill-use him.

Ah! if Pipa knew!—­if Pipa had only seen little Gigi lonely in the woods, and heard his roars for help!  Angelo, having found Gigi troublesome, had tied him by a twisted cord of grass to the trunk of an ancient chestnut.  Gigi was trepanned into this thralldom by a heap of flowers artful Angelo had brought him—­purple crocuses and cyclamens, and Canterbury bells, and gaudy pea-stalks, all thrown before the child.  Gigi, in his little torn petticoat, had swallowed the bait, and flung himself upon the bright blossoms, grasping them in his dirty fingers.  Presently the delighted babe turned his eyes upon cunning Angelo standing behind him, showing his white teeth.  Satisfied that Angelo was there, Gigi buried himself among the flowers.  He crowed to them in his baby way, and flung them here and there.  Gigi would run and catch them, too; but suddenly he felt something which stopped him.  It was a grass cord which Angelo had secretly woven standing behind Gigi—­then had made it fast round Gigi’s waist and knotted it to a tree.  A cloud came over Gigi’s jolly little face—­a momentary cloud—­when he found he could not run after the flowers.  But it soon passed away, and he squatted down upon the grass (the inveigled child), and again clutched the tempting blossoms.  Then his little eyes peered round for Angelo to play with him.  Alas!—­Angelo was gone!

Gigi sobbed a little to himself silently, but the treacherous flowers had still power to console him; at least, he could tear them to pieces.  But by-and-by when the sun mounted high over the tops of the forest-clad mountains, and poured down its burning rays, swallowing up all the shade and glittering like flame on every leaf, Gigi grew hot and weary.  He was very empty, too; it was just the time that Pipa fed him.  His stomach craved for food.  He craved for Pipa, too, for home, for the soft pressure of Pipa’s ample bosom, where he lay so snug.