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 come like flies to wine, never fear,' said Joconda grimly. 'The child has no such thoughts. Let her be.'

Andreino went away grumbling. He hiked to act the part of the padrone d' amore, though the sickly and scant population of the coast gave him little scope for the taste, and he had thought to taunt and tease the woman of Savoy into proving to him how many of those pretty amorini, good solid coins, were in the pitcher under the hearth, or the bucket sunk at the bottom of the well, or the hole in the brick behind the mule's manger, or wherever it might be that the savings of her long life were kept.

Joconda, left alone with the girl, looked at her a little wistfully.

'Child, you are handsome,' she said at last. 'That old cracked chatterer said true. Some one may want to marry you.'

'Yes,' said Musa, indifferently.

'Though there is not a soul here, still sometimes they come—Lucchese, Pistoiese, what not—they come as they go; they are a faithless lot; they love all winter, and while the corn is in the ear it goes well, but after harvest—phew!—they put their gains in their pockets and they are off and away back