She has a blooming, winsome face, grey eyes that are soft and shady, and crisply waving hair; she has full lips, too, and lovely rows of white gleaming teeth, and she laughs as she pulls a letter from her pocket.
‘This is the one which he wrote to me,’ she continues. ‘Perhaps you may like to see it, that you may know the style that will fit him best.’
‘No, no! my daughter; I have written many a love-letter, and can trust to my own sense,’ grumbles the scrivano, as he sets pens and paper in order, for he has his own well-worn phrases ready flowing to hand, and would be greatly discomfited at having to invent any new ones. He puts on his spectacles, smoothes the fair sheet of paper, and, dipping his pen in the ink, again glances up at the girl for instructions. She meanwhile stands awkwardly before him, smiling to herself, and ejaculating beneath her breath, as she twirls her apron mechanically round finger and thumb.
‘But I never said it was a love-letter,’ she says at last, laughing again.
‘Eh, well, well, my daughter. A letter to a gallant, then? What matter? it’s all the same thing. Tell me his name, and whether you mean to have him or no, and then leave the rest to me.’
‘But no, Signor Cappellano,’ remonstrates the damsel eagerly; ‘it is not just so. You must understand the affair.’ And she comes closer to the table, for Bianca wants to have a finger in the matter herself.
‘You see,’ she says, ‘the young man is rich and fine, they tell me, and a good match for me, a poor contadina: I don’t want to send him quite away. But then, I don’t just know either if he will suit me or no! Now you, who know the Latin, and are fine and wise, you can put it grandly, what I mean.’
‘Yes, yes, my daughter, surely; so tell me what to write first.’
‘Well, first you shall put,’ and Bianca plays again with her apron, ‘You shall put—that I have received his letter,’ she blurts forth, as though struck with a good and sudden thought.
The fine steel pen proceeds to work, and makes a few flourishes on the pink paper, while the girl looks on, eager and intent.