As soon as I had passed my fourteenth birthday I was apprenticed to Madama. Flavia was one of her best workwomen then, as she has been ever since. After the first six months I received twenty centimes a day, and at the end of the first year thirty centimes. We went away from home every morning at seven o'clock. La Mamma gave us a good breakfast of black bread and coffee before we set out, and black bread and onions or apples for our dinner. Sometimes, instead of onions or apples, she would give us ten or fifteen centimes; and that we liked better, because then we could make a bank. Making a bank we called it when we put all our money together. Madama had then twenty-five apprentices, and at dinner-time we used to put all our money together and send out and buy something. One would buy anchovies, another ham, another olives, another cheese, and so on. There was one apprentice who always did the marketing for us. Then we used to clear the work-table and set out our food, and dine merrily enough. I was an apprentice at Madama's for five years, and then began to work for myself. If Madama had been willing to pay me a franc a day and give me my dinner besides, I dare say that I might have been there now; but she would not, and so I plucked up my courage and tried my hand alone. For some time before I left her I had been working so well, at cutting out and fitting, finishing, and so on, that she used to give me all the finest and most difficult work to do; but still she never did and never would pay me more than eighty centimes [sixteen cents] a day. None of us got more than that. What we always liked to do was to carry the dresses home, because then the ladies usually gave us something. And at Christmas, when we went to wish our patrons all happiness, we got very nice presents. One Christmas we received thirty francs. When we carried dresses home we generally got twenty or thirty centimes. That made fifteen centimes for each of us, because we always did errands in couples. One night at ten o'clock we had to go quite across Florence in a driving rain to carry a lady a ball-dress. We were dripping wet when we reached her palace, but the dress was in good order, and we hoped, considering the lateness of the hour, and the bad weather, and so on, that the lady would give us something handsome, perhaps as much as half a franc. Well, she was very glad to see us, and, after putting on the dress, she said that she must give us something. And so she did,--five centimes [one cent] to each of us! I swallowed my anger, and put the coin into my pocket, but my companion fitted hers nicely into the key-hole of the hall door as soon as it was closed behind us. "There!" says she; "now my lady miser will have to send for a locksmith, and that will teach her not to be so stingy another time." So we both ran home laughing, in spite of our disappointment. But we were not so fortunate as to get off without a scolding. The next day the lady