Zorzi said nothing, and after looking at them a long time Giovanni turned away and stood before the furnace.  The copper ladle with which the specimens were taken from the pots lay on the brick ledge near one of the ‘boccas.’  Giovanni took it, looked round to see where the iron plate for testing was placed, and thrust the ladle into the aperture, holding it lightly lest the heat should hurt his hand.

“You shall not do that!” cried Zorzi, who was already beside him.

Before Giovanni knew what was happening Zorzi had struck the ladle from his hand, and it disappeared through the ‘bocca’ into the white-hot glass within.

CHAPTER IX

With an oath Giovanni raised his hand to strike Zorzi in the face, but the quick Dalmatian snatched up his heavy blow-pipe in both hands and stood in an attitude of defence.

“If you try to strike me, I shall defend myself,” he said quietly.

Giovanni’s sour face turned grey with fright, and then as his impotent anger rose, the grey took an almost greenish hue that was bad to see.  He smiled in a sickly fashion.  Zorzi set the blow-pipe upright against the furnace and watched him, for he saw that the man was afraid of him and might act treacherously.

“You need not be so violent,” said Giovanni, and his voice trembled a little, as he recovered himself.  “After all, my father would not have made any objection to my trying the glass.  If I had, I could not have guessed how it was made.”

Zorzi did not answer, for he had discovered that silence was his best weapon.  Giovanni continued, in the peevish tone of a man who has been badly frightened and is ashamed of it.

“It only shows how ignorant you are of glass-making, if you suppose that my father would care.”  As he still got no reply beyond a shrug of the shoulders, he changed the subject.  “Did you see my father make any of those things?” he asked, pointing to the shelves.

“No,” answered Zorzi.

“But he made them all here, did he not?” insisted Giovanni.  “And you are always with him.”

“He did not make any of them.”

Giovanni opened his eyes in astonishment.  In his estimation there was no man living, except his father, who could have done such work.  Zorzi smiled, for he knew what the other’s astonishment meant.

“I made them all,” he said, unable to resist the temptation to take the credit that was justly his.

“You made those things?” repeated Giovanni incredulously.

But Zorzi was not in the least offended by his disbelief.  The more sceptical Giovanni was, the greater the honour in having produced anything so rarely beautiful.

“I made those, and many others which the master keeps in his house,” he said.

Giovanni would have liked to give him the lie, but he dared not just then.

“If you made them, you could make something of the kind again,” he said.  “I should like to see that.  Take your blow-pipe and try.  Then I shall believe you.”