With a "By your leave, Sor Beppo," Angioletto stepped delicately into
the room. He threw down cloak and cap, unstrapped girdle and hanger,
stripped off his doublet, and stood up in shirt and breeches. Beppo
watched him, all agape, too breathless to chew. Before he could
interfere--
"By the Saints, but he's in!" he cried with arms thrown up. "Eh, master,
come you back, come you back!"
"What do you want?" a muffled voice came from the chimney. Beppo sawed
the air.
"Don't you play the fool up there, my boy, don't you do it! That's as
foul as the grave, that chimney is. I'll have ye on my soul as long as I
live, and I can ill afford it, for I've a queasy conscience in my black
shell." He seemed to be treading on pins.
He was answered, "We will talk of your conscience and its shell when I
come back. Take off my shoes, will you?"
A neat leg was pushed into the fireplace; then another. Beppo did the
office, meek as an acolyte. Then he sighed, for the legs drew up the
chimney and vanished in dust.
"There goes a lad of spirit to his gloomy end," murmured brokenly the
sweep, as he looked at the little red shoes in his hand. "I would not
have had that come to pass for twenty gold ducats. But, Lord! who'd 'a
thought it of a Court spark, that he should be as good as his word? Not
I, used to Courts as a man may be." He fell to scratching his head.
"Hey, hey!" he cried, as there was a prodigious scuffling up the
chimney. "Now he strangles, now he strangles!" A shower of soot came
down. Beppo flacked about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo
crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an awed
whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the
chimney were still very lively. "Eh, there he is again," said the old
sweep. "What now?" Down came a rat, squeaking for its life, then three
in succession, very silent because their necks were wrung. "This is
better than a cat any day of the seven," said Sor Beppo. "What a diamond
of a poet! He should be crowned with laurel-twigs if I were Duke Borso
in all his glory. Being but Beppo the sweep, he shall be free of my
mystery the moment he's free of my chimney-stack."
He could await Angioletto's coming now with equal mind. The lad had
approved himself. I leave you to judge of the welcome he got when,
breathless, scratched, and sable as the night, he showed his white teeth
at the door. Beppo, in fact, fell weeping on his neck. By this simple
device Angioletto was enabled to keep his word, and Bellaroba to find
him black but comely.