d at the quickness with which the child learned to
perform his new duties, and began to think the jest might one day turn
to earnest.

From early morning until sundown Pietro was never idle, and when the
rough work was done he would stand and watch the master as he painted,
and listen breathless to the tales which Niccolo loved to tell.

'There is nothing so great in all the world as the art of painting,'
the master would say. 'It is the ladder that leads up to heaven, the
window which lets light into the soul. A painter need never be lonely
or poor. He can create the faces he loves, while all the riches of
light and colour and beauty are always his. If thou hast it in thee to
be a painter, my little Perugino, I can wish thee no greater fortune.'

Then when the day's work was done and the short spell of twilight drew
near, the boy would leave the shop and run swiftly down the narrow
street until he came to the grim old city gates. Once outside, under
the wide blue sky in the free open air of the country, he drew a long,
long breath of pleasure, and quickly found a hidden corner in the cleft
of the hoary trunk of an olive-tree, where no passer-by could see him.
There he sat, his chin resting on his hands, gazing and gazing out over
the plain below, drinking in the beauty with his hungry eyes.

How he loved that great open space of sweet fresh air, in the calm pure
light of the evening hour. That white light, which seemed to belong
more to heaven than to earth, shone on everything around. Away in the
distance the purple hills faded into the sunset sky. At his feet the
plain stretched away, away until it met the mountains, here and there
lifting itself in some little hill crowned by a lonely town whose roofs
just caught the rays of the setting sun. The evening mist lay like a
gossamer veil upon the low-lying lands, and between the little towns
the long straight road could be seen, winding like a white ribbon
through the grey and silver, and marked here and there by a dark
cypress-tree or a tall poplar. And always there would be a glint of
blue, where a stream or river caught the reflection of the sky and held
it lovingly there, like a mirror among the rocks.

But Pietro did not have much time for idle dreaming. His was not an
easy life, for Niccolo made but little money with his painting, and the
boy had to do all the work of the house besides attending to the shop.
But all the time he was sweeping and dusting he looke