at to-do. The
warden of San Francesco has been to the bishop, and the bishop is with
Can Grande at this moment. You must come, indeed, at
once--_subitissimo_!"

Vanna laughed--the rich quiet laugh of a girl whose affairs are in good
train, and all other affairs the scratch of a flea.

"Why, what have I to do with the bishop and Can Grande, La Testolina?"
says she. "My master is out, and I must mind the shop. There is baby
too."

"By Saints Pan and Silvanus, my girl, it will be the worse for you if
you come not," said La Testolina, with a tragic sniff. "Eh, you little
fool, don't you know that it is you and your brat have set all Verona by
the ears?"

Vanna had never thought of the ears of Verona, and knew not how to think
of them now; but she saw that her friend was in a fever of suppressed
knowledge. Therefore she shawled her head and her baby in her sea-blue
cloak, locked the shop-door, and followed La Testolina.

The sealed gates in the white convent wall were barred and
double-locked. A scared brother cocked his eye through the grille to see
who was there.

"It is she," hissed La Testolina.

"_Dio mio_, the _causa causans_!" cried he, and let them in through a
cranny. "Follow me, mistresses, and God give good ending to this
adventure," he prayed, as he slippered up the court.

Vanna, blank and smiling, La Testolina with wandering, fearful eyes,
followed.

They found the prior sitting well back in his ebony chair and in
meditation, his chin buried in his hand. Behind him (and behind his back
his hands) was Fra Corinto the pittanciar, pockmarked, thin, and
mortified. He looked the prior's reproach, and was.

"Now, women," said the prior, testily--a fat and flabby old man with a
sour mouth--"now, women, which of you is at the bottom of this accursed
business? Where is the baby? Let me judge for myself."

La Testolina, protesting her remarkable innocence by every quiver of her
head, edged Vanna to the front. Vanna stood up, straight as a candle,
and unveiled her bosom.

"Do you want to see my little son, reverend prior?" she said. "Behold
him here (_Eccololi_)." She held him out proudly in her arms, as if he
were monstrance and she priest.

Now whether it was that motherhood had fired a comely girl with the
beautiful seriousness of a woman, so that she was transfigured before
him; or whether some chance passage of the crossing lights played tricks
with his vision--which it was, or whether it was both,