Page:Helen Hunt--Ramona.djvu/136

130 This was early in the forenoon. The sun was still high in the west, when Ramona, sitting as usual in the veranda, at her embroidery, saw Alessandro coming, followed by two men, bearing the raw-hide bed.

“What can that be?” she said. “Some new invention of Alessandro's, but for what?”

“A bed for the Señor Felipe, Señorita,” said Alessandro, running lightly up the steps. “The Señora has given permission to place it here on the veranda, and Señor Felipe is to lie here day and night; and it will be a marvel in your eyes how he will gain strength. It is the close room which is keeping him weak now; he has no illness.”

“I believe that is the truth, Alessandro,” exclaimed Ramona; “I have been thinking the same thing. My head aches after I am in that room but an hour, and when I come here I am well. But the nights too, Alessandro? Is it not harmful to sleep out in the night air?”

“Why, Señorita?” asked Alessandro, simply.

And Ramona had no answer, except, “I do not know; I have always heard so.”

“My people do not think so,” replied Alessandro; “unless it is cold, we like it better. It is good, Señorita, to look up at the sky in the night.”

“I should think it would be,” cried Ramona. “I never thought of it. I should like to do it.”

Alessandro was busy, with his face bent down, arranging the bedstead in a sheltered corner of the veranda. If his face had been lifted, Ramona would have seen a look on it that would have startled her more than the one she had surprised a few days previous, after the incident with Margarita. All day there had been coming and going in Alessandro's brain a confused procession of thoughts, vague yet intense. Put in words, they would have been found to be little more than ringing changes on this idea: