"You yoost behafed awful!" exclaimed the blushing waitress that
evening, with tears of laughter at the remembrance.

She was as happy as her lover, except for two small worries that she
had: she feared that her uncle, Louie Gratz, with whom she lived, or
one of her few friends, might, when they found she was to marry Toby,
allude to him as a "Dago," in which case she had an intuition that he
would slap the offender; and she was afraid of the smallpox, which had
caused the quarantine of two shanties not far from her uncle's house.
The former of her fears she did not mention, but the latter she spoke
of frequently, telling Pietro how Gratz was panic-stricken, and talked
of moving, and how glad she was that Toby's "gran' palazzo" was in
another quarter of the city, as he had led her to believe. Laughing
her humours almost away, he told her that the red and green lanterns,
threatening murkily down the street, were for only wicked ones, like
that Meesa Peaslay, for whom she discovered, Pietro's admiration had
diminished. And when she thought of the new home--far across the city
from the ugly flags and lanterns--the tiny room with its engraving of
the "Rock of Ages" and its canary, she forgot both her troubles
entirely; for now, at last, the marvellous fact was assured: the five
hundred dollars was pinned into the waistcoat pocket, lying upon
Pietro's heart day and night, the precious lump that meant to him
Bertha and a home. The good Republican set election-day for the
happiest holiday of his life, for that would be his wedding-day.

He left her at her own gate, the evening before that glorious day, and
sang his way down the street, feeling that he floated on the airy
uplift of his own barcarole beneath sapphire skies, for Bertha had put
her arms about him at last.