Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/121

 and honest lad. She is too much alone. She ponders too much. That is not good. Were she my girl I would get a good lad.'

'There are no lads here.'

'But some come ashore from the coasters; a child as handsome as that one, with the pretty penny the woman of Savoy has got under the hearthstone, need never go a begging. If she were like Dina, yonder, she would soon leave off thinking about dead singers and their hearts.'

He pointed with his pipe-stem to his grand-daughter, a young woman, who, with one child on her breast and another on her back, was mending nets on the mole wall.

'She is a baby herself,' said his wife, 'and it is you who tell her all those tales. Why did you tell her if it was anything wrong.'

'It is nothing wrong,' said Andreino, offended. 'Is it likely I would tell a child a wrong thing? All the others they listen and gape; it is only she who takes the tale to heart in that fashion. Things one says are like well-water; it is the pitcher they are poured into that colours them.'

'The pitcher is as it is made,' said the old wife, who was a sensible and positive woman.