‘Oh!’ comes an ejaculation in many tones from all the maidens.
‘It was down at the fair of Presoli. I went to sell and to buy for the mother, and as I was bargaining over a handkerchief—and I must have been red with excitement, too—he comes up behind me, and I hear him laughing with right good-will at my tussle with the old pedona. “Ha, ha! my pretty girl,” says he, “and I will give you the handkerchief.” “A thousand thanks, Signor Beppo,” I answer, and then we discourse a little, and when I have sold the little white heifer and bought the sieves and the rolling-pin for the mother, “It is nearly evening,” says he, “and at dusk the dance is to begin. Thou wilt surely come and step one measure with me.” I stay for the dance, I give no thought to the scolding which the mother will, perhaps, give me—for she expected me home for the supper, you must know—but I just enjoy myself to the full. Then the Signor Beppo gives me to eat and to drink, good wine of Monferrato, and he conducts me home in the later evening—it must have been upon ten o’clock.’
‘Oh, what fun!’ exclaim all the girls. ‘But didst thou not fear the mother?’
‘Che!’ the girl ejaculates, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I invented a little white lie for her. I told her there had come a rich signore, and wanted to buy the heifer for a good price, but then, that he went away, having said he would come back for her; that I waited, though tired and weary I was, until dusk of evening, and when he never came, that I sold to another man. Oh, the mother praised me for a thrifty girl! You think I am so stupid that I can’t even find a lie when I want it!’
The girls laugh. ‘Oh, no,’ says one, ‘and the white lies which one needs not to tell in confession are so fair and convenient.’
‘But say on, Bianca,’ calls out another. ‘The handkerchief that he gave thee—thou hast it?’
‘Surely. It is a ravishing handkerchief. He would have given me a brooch of gold, but that I would not.’
‘Oh, pity!’ says a sympathetic maid.
‘Pity!’ retorts Bianca. ‘Thou little fool! And what excuse should I have given for the trinket? The kerchief the mother knew well I meant to buy for myself, but gold gives no man to a girl but he who will marry her, and where was then my suitor to show? No, Bianca has got no gourd’s head on her shoulders! She knows her business! Also did he get his box on the ear before I had done with him, the fine young man,’ laughs she!
‘How was that? tell us,’ come the voices in chorus. But Bianca has said as much as she means to say, and no entreaties can extract more news from her.