Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/76

64 salvation and his stomach; and in like manner did every person in this narrative after his kind.

Then, on a bright morning in early September, old Baldassare came limping up the Ponte Navi with his pack on his back, paused a minute on the bridge, as his habit was, to look down on the busy laundresses by the water, spat twice, and so doing was observed, threw a cracked "Buon' giorno, La Testolina!" over the side, and went on his slow way to the Via Stella.

It was still very early, but not so early that Vanna was not in her shop-door sewing and crooning to the baby on her lap. She heard his step the moment he rounded the bottom corner of the street, blushed prettily from neck to temples, caught up the child, and went out to meet her lord. Standing before him in her cool cotton gown, there was no sun in the dusky place but what her halo of hair made, no warmth but that of her welcoming mouth. Half shyly she stopped, holding up the baby for him to see: it was not for her to make advances, you must understand; but it needed no magic to make one believe that what a man's wife should be to a man that was young Monna Vanna to her rag-picker. Baldassare blinked and tried to look harassed; the next minute he had pinched Vanna's cheek. She put the baby into his wiry old arms—a very right move of hers.

"Eh, bambinaccio," he muttered, highly pleased, "it is good to see thee! So thou art come out to meet thy old dad—thou and thy little rogue of a mother? Come, the pair of ye, and see what my pack has in store."