Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/149

 also and shut them in his wooden brass-bound box. Then he persuaded a huckster of the coast to take her matting too, and altogether made her passing rich.

'Nay, I knew Joconda forty years,' he said, 'and a good soul she was, though silent as a clapperless bell, but good and sturdy and honest, and hospitable always if she had but a crust.'

Then, being a chattering man, a bell with more clapper to it than was needful, he would ask her many questions, all of which embarrassed her to answer. She replied at random, vaguely, longing to get away, and buy what she had come for, and set sail again. But the pedlar was not easily denied, and chattered on; and then out of a dirty lane came Andreino, who had pulled himself over in his old punt from Santa Tarsilla to speak sub rosâ of some tobacco he had received contraband from fishers of the French coast, and which he was willing to sell, as he usually sold such good consignments, to the parish priest of Telamone.

Andreino would be chatted with as well, and listened to, and was curious, and hard to pacify, as he hobbled by her side to the edge of the shallow anchorage.