“Let go, Nenne!” he said; “do you take us for a bathing house?”

“You have a beautiful pair of padroni, you and your brother,” observed Nenne, making a hideous face over the boat’s side.

Bastianello did not move, but stretched out his long arm to take up the boat-hook, which lay within his reach.

“If you had seen what I saw in the garden up there just now,” continued the small boy.  “Madonna mia, what a business!”

“Eh, you rascal? what did you see?” asked the sailor, turning the boat-hook round and holding it so that he could rap the boy’s knuckles with the butt end of it.

“There was the Count, who is Ruggiero’s padrone, trying to kiss your signora’s maid, and offering her the gold, and she—­yah!” Another hideous grimace, apparently of delight, interrupted the narrative.

“What did she do?” asked Bastianello quietly.  But he grew a shade paler.

“Eh? you want to know now, do you?  What will you give me?” inquired the urchin.

“Half a cigar,” said Bastianello, who knew the boy’s vicious tastes, and forthwith produced the bribe from his cap, holding it up for the other to see.

“What did she do?  She threw down the gold and called him an infamous liar to his face.  A nice padrone Ruggiero has, who is called a liar and an infamous one by serving maids.  Well, give me the cigar.”

“Take it,” said the sailor, rising and reaching out.

The urchin stuck it between his teeth, nodded his thanks, lowered himself gently into the water so as not to wet it, and swam cautiously to the breakwater, holding his head in the air.

Bastianello sat down again and continued to smoke his pipe.  There was a happy look in his bright blue eyes which had not been there before.

CHAPTER X.

Bastianello sat still in his boat, but he no longer looked to seaward, facing the breeze.  He kept an eye on the pier, looking out for his brother, who had not appeared since the midday meal.  The piece of information he had just received was worth communicating, for it raised Teresina very much in the eyes of Bastianello, and he did not doubt that it would influence Ruggiero in the right direction.  Bastianello, too, was keen enough to see that anything which gave him an opportunity of discussing the girl with his brother might be of advantage, in that it might bring Ruggiero to the open expression of a settled purpose—­either to marry the girl or not.  And if he once gave his word that he would not, Bastianello would be no longer bound to suffer in silence as he had suffered so many weeks.  The younger of the brothers was less passionate, less nervous and less easily moved in every way than the elder, but he possessed much of the same general character and all of the same fundamental good qualities—­strength, courage and fidelity.  In his quiet way he was deeply and sincerely in love with Teresina, and meant, if possible and if Ruggiero did not take her, to make her his wife.