“Not at all, nephew mine. I have found her. I saw her last night for the first time since the Feast of San Giorgio. Ah, how I had searched! It was in the theatre that I saw her--at the Titania, a grand spectacle. So many women, and beautiful! But not one was the equal of Juno. My word of honour for that. Well, I waited after the representation, but did not see her. To-morrow night, though, I shall say to her: ‘Juno, be my wife. In three months come to my house, to Casa Di Bello.’ These words will I say to her, and I shall wait at the stage door until she comes out.” “You will wait many months, then,” said Bertino to himself with a smothered chuckle as he fell upon a patty of codfish that Angelica had just brought in. “Grand trouble, grand trouble,” sighed Angelica, as she prepared the after-dinner _zabaglioni_[B] for her master. “If the signorina were here he would not dare bring her to the house. And when she comes and finds the singer has been in Casa Di Bello! O Maria--_grandissimo_ trouble!” [Footnote B: An Italian eggnog, served hot.] In the evening Bertino accompanied Juno to the Grand Central Depot, whence she left for Buffalo with the rest of the hundred American beauties of the “Zapeaca” aggregation. * * * * * On Tuesday morning Bertino regarded his uncle quizzically across the breakfast table, but of his second fruitless visit to the Titania’s stage door the signore was as silent as the figure of San Patrizio that looked down upon Casa Di Bello from the architrave of the church on the opposite side of Mulberry Street. And for many a day thereafter not a word did he utter concerning any magnificent woman that was to become his wife. CHAPTER XIII THE PEACE DISTURBED THE bluebird came again to perch on Garibaldi’s cap, the baby maples put forth their leaves, and Signor Di Bello told Bertino it was time to give the Wooden Bunch a new coat of yellow. Once more the fire-escapes on either side of Corso di Mulberry bloomed with potted geraniums; glistening radishes lent their vernal blush to the vegetable stalls, and the thoughts of Sara the Frier of Pepper Pods turned to summer profits. The building trades had set the winter idlers to work, and the Alley of the Moon resounded no longer with the wild shouts of _mora_ players. The hokey-pokey man, tiding over the cold months with an ancient hand organ, yearned to put away The Blue Danube and The Marseillaise, and wheel out his gorgeous ice-cream cart. The old gondolier, selling pine-cone seeds at the foot of China Hill, could leave his toe-toaster at home now, and let the May sunshine economize the charcoal.