The beldam before long smuggled into the lady's chamber the
boy of whom she had spoken, and not long after another, such being the
humour of the lady, who, standing in perpetual dread of her husband, was
disposed, in this particular, to make the most of her opportunities. And
one of these days, her husband being to sup in the evening with a friend
named Ercolano, the lady bade the beldam bring her a boy as pretty and
dainty as was to be found in Perugia; and so the beldam forthwith did.
But the lady and the boy being set at table to sup, lo, Pietro's voice
was heard at the door, bidding open to him. Whereupon the lady gave
herself up for dead; but being fain, if she might, to screen the boy, and
knowing not where else to convey or conceal him, bestowed him under a
hen-coop that stood in a veranda hard by the chamber in which they were
supping, and threw over it a sorry mattress that she had that day emptied
of its straw; which done she hastened to open the door to her husband;
saying to him as he entered:--"You have gulped your supper mighty quickly
to-night." Whereto Pietro replied:--"We have not so much as tasted it."
"How so?" enquired the lady. "I will tell thee," said Pietro. "No sooner
were we set at table, Ercolano, his wife, and I, than we heard a sneeze
close to us, to which, though 'twas repeated, we paid no heed; but as the
sneezer continued to sneeze a third, a fourth, a fifth, and many another
time to boot, we all began to wonder, and Ercolano, who was somewhat out
of humour with his wife, because she had kept us a long time at the door
before she opened it, burst out in a sort of rage with:--'What means
this? Who is't that thus sneezes?' and made off to a stair hard by,
beneath which and close to its foot was a wooden closet, of the sort
which, when folk are furnishing their houses, they commonly cause to be
placed there, to stow things in upon occasion.
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