thers as they bore away to the hospital a
sick old man who had fallen in the street. Then they found a marionette
show and stood entranced for a long time before it, watching the
thrilling adventures of Pantalone. After that they crept into the dim
Cathedral, now nearly empty of people, and watched the women who came to
light their tapers at the Great Paschal Candle beside the altar. It was
then that they discovered they were hungry, and, going out on the
street, they refreshed themselves with oranges bought of a fruit-vendor.

If Teresina could have seen the children of the Marchesa as they stood
sucking oranges in the public street, it is likely she might have
fainted with horror, and been carried away to the hospital by the
black-robed Brothers of Mercy in her turn; but as it was, Teresina was
not there to see. After searching the crowds distractedly for an hour,
she had rushed back to the palace, hoping to find the Twins there before
her, and turning the whole establishment into an uproar when she found
they had not yet appeared.

Meanwhile, the children, unconscious of time, were wandering about
enjoying their new freedom, and growing more adventurous at every step.
Though they had finished their oranges, they were still hungry, and
there was a wonderful smell of roasting chicken in the air, which Beppo
followed with the unerring instinct of a hungry boy, and soon the two
children were standing before an open cook-shop in a side street,
gnawing chicken bones and smacking their lips with as much gusto as if
they had been bred in the streets instead of a palace.

When they left the cook-shop, with its rows of bright copper pots and
pans and its delicious smells, Beppo had only a few soldi left in his
pockets, and as for Beppina, there had been nothing but a handkerchief
in hers from the beginning.

"Avanti!" cried Beppo, made more bold than ever by the courage which
comes with a full stomach. "Let's explore!" and, seizing the hand of
the more timid Beppina, he ventured farther and farther up the narrow
street. They had never been in this part of the city before in their
lives. They had never even dreamed that people could live in such dark,
dirty houses, more like rabbit-warrens than homes for human beings, and
on streets so narrow that Beppo could easily leap across them in one
jump.

They made their way through groups of idle loungers, stepping cautiously
around dirty babies playing in the gutters, and