THE FIRST LADY THE following night, and every night of the week, Signor Di Bello held forth ecstatically in the box at La Scala. But the warmth of his demonstrations for Juno was unable to melt the frost that her dreadful voice had caused to settle on the audience--a frost that grew thicker with each new display of her copious self. From his bench under the gallery Bertino was a witness of his uncle’s frantic courtship, and the green fever fairly consumed him, for he had decided that Juno was made for him, and that neither his uncle nor any one else should have her for wife. In the matter of courting he too had not been idle, though he was young enough to know better than to make a public show of his addresses. More than once it had occurred that while Signor Di Bello took his ease in the Caffè of the Three Gardens of an afternoon, Juno and Bertino passed a quarter of an hour together in the grocery. With a black mantilla of cheap lace thrown over her head, instead of the accustomed shawl that maids of Mulberry wear on working days, she visited the shop for her supply of _salame_, lupine beans, or the goat’s-milk cheese of which she told Bertino she was very fond. The first time she entered, his heart leaped and he began stammering excuses for the spot of yellow he had given her cheek at their last meeting. Would the beautiful signorina believe that it was all an accident, clumsy calf that he was--a mishap most stupid? He begged her to forgive him. Would she not? Oh, how happy it would make him! “Bah!” she answered, looking him over. “Give me good weight of _salame_ and free measure of beans.” Clearly, the weight and measure that he gave suited her, for she came every afternoon thereafter, but never when Signor Di Bello happened to be in the shop. One day he said to her: “Every night I dream of you.” “Ah, _si_?” she replied, arching her rich brows. “And every night I dream. Shall I tell you of what?” “Of me?” breathed Bertino. “Of you? Simpleton! I dream of getting out of this hogpen. Blood of San Gennaro! Do you think I came to America to live a life like this? Wait until I have money in the Bank of Risparmio.” “But, signorina, I love you.” “Love! What good is that? It may do for these animals to live on. For me, no. When I marry I shall become a grand signora.” On the fifth day of their acquaintance she told him her troubles. Five dollars a week was all she got at La Scala, and Signor Grabbini--a man most stingy--kept back two of that for the dress, the scarlet slippers, and the pink tights. Don’t talk to her of America as a place to make money. What a pigsty was Mulberry! Her room, which she hired of Luigia the Garlic Woman, was smaller and darker than any she ever had in Naples. And what did it cost? A whole dollar every week! Five _liras_ for a room! Merciful Madonna!