Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/15

Rh ter, died also. Don Urbano was never tired of saying how providential it was that she had held off her demise until Giovanna was old enough to take her place. The curate was fat and lazy, very much interested in himself; his stipend barely paid his shot at the "Fiore del Marinajo," under whose green bush he was mostly to be seen. Vanna had to roll up her sleeves, bend her straight young back, and knee the board by the Ponte Navi. I have no doubt it did her good; the work is healthy, the air, the sun, the water-spray kissed her beauty ripe; but she got no husband because she could save no dowry. Everything went to stay the seven crying mouths.

Then, on a day when half her twenty-first year had run after the others, old Baldassare Dardicozzo stayed on the bridge to rest from the burden of his pack—on a breezy March morning when the dust filled his eyes and the wind emptied him of breath. Baldassare had little enough to spare as it was. So he dropped his load in the angle of the bridge, with a smothered "Accidente!" or some such, and leaned to watch the swollen water buffeted crosswise by the gusts, or how the little mills amid-stream dipped as they swam breasting the waves. In so doing he became aware, in quite a peculiar way, of Vanna Scarpa.

Baldassare was old, red-eyed, stiff in the back. Possibly he was rheumatic, certainly he was grumpy. He had a long slit mouth which played him a cruel trick; for by nature it smiled when by nature he was most melancholy. Smile it would and did, however cut-throat he felt: if you