CHAPTER I.

The house stands on a hill on the outskirts of Siena, not far from the high red walls that still enclose the town, as entirely as they did in the times long passed by, when Siena was the powerful rival of Florence.

Old frescoes, and the stone coats-of-arms of the dead and gone rulers of the place, decorate the great gates; which seem only waiting for a troop of knights and soldiers to pass through, and with a blast of their bugles awake the ancient inhabitants of the crooked streets, and fill them once more with the picturesque crowds of the middle ages.

We can imagine that the old owners are but lying asleep in their many storied gothic palaces, their vaulted courtyards, and shady loggias; ready to rub their eyes and come out as they hear the well-known sounds ringing across the wide piazza.

But the knights never come, and the old people go on sleeping; and the new people walk about the streets, and haggle at the market, and drive their country carts with the great patient white oxen, and crowd on Sunday up the broad Cathedral steps to kneel in the dim light before the lighted altar, as generations have done before them.

All round the town stretches the open country. Low sandy hills dotted with olive and cyprus trees, melting into a blue sweep of mountains; and about a mile from one of the gates stands the rambling white house with closed shutters in which Maddalena, the housekeeper, lived alone with her two grandchildren.

She was a kind old woman and fond of the twins, who had been left orphans when they were mere babies, but she often thought that surely no grandmother had ever been plagued before, as she was plagued by Tuttu and Tutti.

“When they were infants it was easy enough,” she would declare to a sympathizing neighbour. “Give them a fig or something to play with, and they were perfectly happy; but at times now I am tempted to wish they had no legs, what with accidents and mischief. Not that they’re not fine children, and may be a comfort to my old age, but it’s a harassing thing, waiting.”

It was certainly a fact that Tuttu and Tutti were constantly in mischief; and yet their curly black heads, red cheeks, and great brown eyes, were so attractive, that people even those whose property had been seriously injured by them treated them leniently, and let them off with a scolding.

The twins were always repentant after one of their misfortunes, and made serious promises of amendment; but at the next temptation they forgot all their good resolutions, and never remembered them until they were in disgrace again.

Grandmother Maddalena devised numerous punishments for the children, such as tacking a cow’s head cut out of red stuff, on their backs, when they had teazed Aunt Eucilda’s cow or tieing them up by one leg, with a long cord to the table, for stone-throwing; but Tuttu and Tutti were incorrigible.

They wept loudly, embraced their grandmother, made all kinds of promises and the next day went off to do just the same things all over again.

There was only one person who had any influence over them, Father Giacomo, the priest of the little Church of Sancta Maria del Fiore, close by. He had known them from the time they were helpless babies in swaddling clothes, till they grew to be mischievous creatures in homespun trousers; and in every stage of character and clothing he had borne with them, taught them, played with them, and loved them, until the Padre had become their idea of all that was wise and good, and they would do more for the sake of pleasing him than for anyone in the world, not even excepting their grandmother.

Every Sunday afternoon Father Giacomo called to take them for a walk, the one only sure way of keeping them out of mischief; and sometimes to their great delight they would go along the olive-bordered road to Siena, returning in the evening to the Padre’s house, in time to have a good game with the two cats Neri and Bianca, who had lived there since their infancy, as important members of the household.

On their eighth birthday, Tuttu and Tutti assured their grandmother that they really intended to reform. They promised faithfully to give up tree climbing, fishing in the pond, and many other favourite sports, and commenced to dig in the piece of kitchen garden under their grandmother’s direction. In fact so zealous did Tuttu become that he borrowed a knife from one of the farm labourers who was vine pruning, and cut the whole of the branches off a vine near the house, ending with a terrible gash in his own thumb, which necessitated his being carried in an ox-cart to the hospital in Siena, supported in his grandmother’s arms; while Tutti walked behind weeping bitterly, under the impression that the doctor would certainly kill Tuttu this time for his carelessness.

Tuttu was not killed, however. The cut was sewn up, while the ox-cart with its good-natured driver waited outside, and the depressed party returned home, grandmother Maddalena clasping her little earthen pot full of hot wood ashes, which even in the excitement of the accident she had not forgotten to take with her, for it was a cold day in early springtime.

A scaldino, carried about by all the Siennese women, and used in the house instead of a fire.

Tutti was allowed to ride home in the cart, and sat holding Tuttu’s hand, his eyes round with solemnity, the traces of tears still on his cheeks.

That night he went to sleep with his arm thrown round Tuttu’s neck, his curly head resting against his shoulder and though Tuttu was cramped and uncomfortable, and his thumb pained him, he remained heroically still until he also dropped asleep, and the two little brothers dreamed peacefully of pleasant things until the morning.

CHAPTER II.

“Well, thank Heaven! those children are safe for the present,” said Maddalena, as she sat on a stone bench in the sun, with the dark clipped cyprus hedge behind her.

To the right rose the stuccoed Palazzo, with its great stone coat-of-arms hanging over the entrance, and inside, a peep of the shady courtyard, with green tubs of orange trees, and the twinkle of a fountain that shot up high into the sunshine, and fell with a splash into a marble basin.

Maddalena, in her broad Tuscan hat with its old-fashioned black velvet for she would never give in to the modern innovations of flowers and ostrich feathers held her distaff in her hand, and as she twisted the spindle and drew out the thread evenly, she thought with satisfaction of the improved behaviour of the twins.

Ever since the accident they had been different creatures, and she wondered how long it would be before they could be apprenticed to some useful trade, and begin to bring in a little money.

“When I can get hold of the Padre alone I’ll ask him about it; but he really does spoil these boys till I don’t know which tyrannizes over him most the two cats or the two children!”

Maddalena’s reflections were suddenly interrupted at this point by the appearance of her grandchildren from the back of the yew hedge by which she was sitting Tuttu on all fours, neighing like a horse, with Tutti on his back, blowing a clay whistle.

“We’re only doing ‘cavalry,’ grandmother,” gasped Tuttu, with a scarlet face, attempting to prance in a military manner.

“Cavalry!” cried Maddalena, starting up. “Those children will be the death of me. Cavalry indeed! Look at your trousers, you disgrace. All the knees yellow sand, and the elbows in holes!” and she seized her distaff and waved it at them threateningly.

To avoid his grandmother’s arm, Tuttu hastily scrambled under the stone seat, but his unfortunate rider thrown off his balance, fell head first against the earthen scaldino, which was broken, and its ashes scattered on the path in all directions.

When Tuttu, lying flat with only his head visible, saw this terrible misfortune; he crawled out from his hiding-place, and taking Tutti’s hand helped him to get up, and stood courageously in front of his grandmother.

“It was all my fault, grandmother. Don’t scold him! I made him do it, and I’m so sorry,” he said, with a quiver in his voice, but Maddalena was too angry to listen to him. She had thrown her distaff on the ground, and was picking up the pieces of the yellow scaldino to see if it could possibly be fitted together again.

“Go in both of you to bed,” she called out without looking up, “and don’t let me see either of you again to-day! Just when I had a moment’s peace too, thinking you were at the Padre’s. It really is too much.”

Tutti burst into loud sobs of terror and remorse, but Tuttu took him by the hand and, without speaking, led him away to the house.

“Why don’t you cry, too, Tuttu?” asked Tutti, stopping his tears to look in astonishment at his brother.

“I’m too old,” said Tuttu. “Grandmother’s quite right, we do behave badly to her.” And that was the beginning of a new era for Tuttu.

The next day as soon as he was awake, he began to think seriously over any possible way by which he could earn enough money to buy a new scaldino. He dressed hurriedly and ran off to talk it over with Father Giacomo, and the result of the conference was a long but kind lecture of good advice, and permission to weed in the Padre’s garden for the sum of one halfpenny for a large basketful.

Tuttu danced about with delight. “Why, I shall earn the money in no time at that rate,” he cried, “and I’ll buy the best scaldino in Siena!”

He felt that he must commence work immediately, and in the evening he staggered into Father Giacomo’s, with a scarlet face, carrying a great hamper of green stuff.

When he had a little recovered himself, he unfolded to his old friend another plan he had thought of during the day, which he was quite sure would please his grandmother.

“I’ve got a broken fiasco that the gardener’s given me,” he said, “and I and Tutti mean to put a bean each into it every day we are really good. Then, at the end of the month a whole month, mind! we might take it up to grandmother.”

Father Giacomo highly approved of this idea, and encouraged the children by every means in his power; so that, for more than three weeks, the beans went in regularly and the halfpence in Tuttu’s store, which he kept like a magpie hidden away in a crack of the woodwork, increased rapidly.

Old Maddalena had long ago forgiven the children, for though she was often angry with them, she loved them really. She guessed that Tuttu was determined to replace the scaldino, as on several occasions he had not been able to resist a veiled hint on the subject; but she pretended perfect ignorance, and the two little boys might whisper and laugh to their heart’s content it was quite certain she never heard anything!

One soft evening in May, Tuttu came into the Palazzo garden in a state of great excitement. His last basket of weeds had been handed in to Father Giacomo, and the entire sum for the scaldino lay in small copper pieces in a crumpled scarlet pocket handkerchief.

“It’s all here,” whispered Tuttu, one great smile stretching across his good-tempered little face. “Every penny of it! Shall it be brown or yellow? It must have a pattern. We’ll go into Siena to-morrow and buy it.”

“To Siena!” said Tutti in an awe-struck whisper, “We’ve never been there by ourselves.”

“Never mind, we’re older now,” replied Tuttu. “Don’t you say anything about it, it’s to be a surprise from beginning to end.”

Tutti agreed, as he always did with his brother. Of course Tuttu knew best, and it would sure to be all right.

CHAPTER III.

They started early in the morning, having put on their holiday clothes and brushed themselves; and as Bianca, who had come over from the Padre’s house, insisted on following them, they tied a string to her red collar and determined to let her share the pleasure of their visit to the “great town.”

Their grandmother was still sleeping, but they left word with the gardener’s boy that they had gone into Siena “on business.”

This sounded well, Tuttu thought, and would disarm suspicion.

The walk along the dusty high road was long and tiring, and they were glad when they arrived safely in the Piazza, where the market people had already begun to collect, for it was market day.

Tuttu carried his precious earnings tied up with intricate knots in the handkerchief, and stowed away in the largest of his pockets. He walked with conscious pride, knowing that he was a person of “property,” and entering the pottery shop at the corner of the Piazza, began to cunningly tap the scaldinos, and peer into them; while Tutti stood by, lost in admiration at his brother’s acuteness.

Finally, a brown pot, with yellow stripes and spots, was chosen and paid for, wrapped in the red handkerchief, and carried off in triumph towards the Porta Camolla.

“Whatever will grandmother say!” cried Tuttu, almost shouting for joy, “I wish I could run all the way. There’ll be a big bean in the fiasco for each of us to-night, won’t there, Tutti?”

“You’ve got a little money left, haven’t you, Tuttu?” enquired Tutti, who was always practical; “Couldn’t we buy some cakes. I really feel very hungry.”

“Certainly not,” said Tuttu, firmly, “I shall put it inside the scaldino for grandmother. That’ll be the second surprise. Don’t you see, Tutti?”

“But it’s only two half-pennies,” argued Tutti.

“Oh, she’ll be glad enough of that!” said Tuttu, and tramped on steadily up the street. “Come along, Tutti, we’ll go into the Cathedral.”

Tutti remonstrated no more, he knew it was useless; and the two little boys, ascending a steep flight of steps, entered the Cathedral at a side door, and knelt down in the dim light in one of the chapels.

Tuttu repeated a prayer he had been taught, and then continued rapidly, “Thank you, too, very much, for making me and Tutti good; and please let us go on putting beans into the fiasco till it can’t hold any more and then we’ll find something else....” He paused to meditate. “Make grandmother pleased with us, and bless the cats.”

Here Tuttu could think of nothing else, and nudged Tutti.

“You go on, Tutti.”

“I think Tuttu’s said everything,” commenced Tutti in a whisper. “But please keep us out of the pond, and make us grow so that we can be artillery; and take us home safe, for the road’s rather long, and we’ve never been there alone, and there’s oxen about.”

“You shouldn’t say that, Tutti,” said Tuttu, reprovingly. “Oxen won’t hurt you, and you shouldn’t be a coward.”

“Well, shall I pray not to be a coward?” enquired Tutti.

“If you think it’s necessary,” said Tuttu. “But you can save that for another time we ought to be going now” so Tutti got up, and the children pushed their way through the heavy curtain by the door, and found themselves once more in the bright sunshine.

Certainly Bianca had been no trouble to them. In the Cathedral she behaved in the most serious manner, sitting by their side, and never moving until they pulled the string to which she was fastened; when she got up solemnly, and followed them on to the Piazza.

“I’m glad I prayed for you, Bianca, good cat!” said Tuttu. “You would never have allowed anyone to touch that scaldino, would you?”

Bianca mewed. She was rather bewildered by her walk through the town, but as long as her two friends were satisfied, that was enough for her.

As they came out upon the more crowded thoroughfare, the twins with their white cat attracted some attention, and many laughing remarks were shouted to them as they edged their way along the narrow paved street, where the absence of any pathway made it necessary to keep their eyes very wide open indeed, to avoid being run over by the carts and carriages.

Tutti walked in charge of Bianca, while Tuttu devoted all his attention to the scaldino in its red handkerchief, and a large green cotton umbrella he had brought from home in case the day should turn out to be rainy.

This umbrella seemed to be endowed with life, so extraordinary was its power of wriggling itself under the legs of the passers by. It had to be constantly wrenched out, with many apologies, by its owner; while the person who had been nearly tripped up by it, went on his or her way grumbling.

No one did more than grumble, however, for the look of horror on Tuttu’s face was irresistible.

“Go on, Tutti; do hurry!” he cried, urgently. “I’m getting so hot with this horrible umbrella. It seems to catch hold of people whichever way I carry it!”

“I am going,” replied Tutti laconically. “But remember, I’ve got the cat.”

As he spoke a boy darted out from one of the grim old houses close by, and picking up a loose stone threw it at Bianca, grazing her head, and leaving a great red stain that commenced to trickle slowly down her spotless white body.

Tuttu, his eyes blazing with wrath, placed the scaldino by the side of the kerbstone, and darted at the boy, waving his umbrella; while Tutti threw his arms round Bianca’s neck and tried to hush her mews of terror by a shower of tears and kisses.

“How dare you?” shouted Tuttu, beside himself with anger. “Go away, and leave our poor Bianca! You’ve killed her, I expect; and I wish I could kill you!” But even in the midst of his ungovernable rage, Tutti’s voice reached him.

“Oh, Tuttu, Tuttu! the scaldino!”

Tuttu darted across the street towards the stone where he had left the precious red bundle. There it was, lying unhurt, and he was about to seize it and carry it to a place of safety, when a fast-trotting horse with one of the light country gigs behind him, dashed down the street.

“Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” shouted the driver but it was too late!

The gig flew on, and Tuttu lay white and quiet, the scaldino still grasped in his two little outstretched hands.

CHAPTER IV.

“Where’s the scaldino, grandmother?” were Tuttu’s first words, when he woke up to find himself lying on a little bed in a long room, with Maddalena and Father Giacomo bending over him. “We saved up.... It’s all for you....” he muttered brokenly, “Have you got it?”

“Yes, my lamb. A beautiful one it is,” said the old woman, the tears streaming down her wrinkled face. “You lie still and get better, my Tuttu.”

“I will, grandmother, but I want you to see the surprise inside. It’s from weeding.... Father Giacomo will tell you. I’m so tired, grandmother.... How’s Bianca?”

“Very well, Tuttu, she has only a slight scratch.... Oh, my poor boy!” and Father Giacomo’s voice broke.

“Is it near evening?” said Tuttu, after a few minutes, during which he lay moving his head restlessly.

“It soon will be,” said the Padre. “Why do you ask, Tuttu?”

“The fiasco.... Do you think I may put a bean in to-night, or was I too angry?”

“You may, Tuttu,” said Father Giacomo, turning away his head. “If you tell me where it is, I will send for it.”

“By the melon bed. Tutti knows. He’ll bring it,” whispered Tuttu. “It’s nearly full only four days more. Put one in for Tutti.”

As the setting sun streamed into the long room, Tutti crept in, holding Father Giacomo’s hand; carrying the broken fiasco.

Tuttu awoke from a restless sleep as they entered, and smiled with a faint reflection of his old happy laugh. “That’s right, Tutti. You have been good, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” quavered Tutti, lifting his terrified, tear-stained face to his brother.

“Put your bean in then, Tutti, and give me mine. It’s getting so late, it’s almost night-time.”

Tutti held out the bean with a trembling hand, and as it dropped into the old bottle, little Tuttu gave a quiet sigh.

“It only wants four more,” he said happily.

Only four more! But Tuttu might never put them in. That night he started on a long, long journey, and as the old grandmother with choking sobs placed the broken bottle on a shelf among her treasures, she turned to Tutti who was lying, worn out with grief, upon the doorstep.

“Come, my Tutti,” she said, “there are only us two now. We must try and be very good to each other.”

Years afterwards, Tutti, coming home on leave for he had clung to his childish idea of being a soldier found the broken fiasco in the corner where his grandmother had hidden it; and taking out the beans that had been lying there so long, he carried them to a little grave with a small white cross at the head of it.

“Dear Tuttu! He would like to have these growing round him,” he thought, and planted them carefully amongst the flowers and grasses.

Grandmother Maddalena was too old to move out of the house now, but Father Giacomo watered the beans lovingly, and in the soft spring air they grew rapidly, so that they soon formed a beautiful tangle, hiding the cross and even the name that still stood there clearly in black letters

“TUTTU.”