Antonio had a longing to do.
Since babyhood, he had watched the madre doing about the house, the padre who left each morning and returned each night after a day of doing somewhere.
All of Antonio’s most interesting world of little things revolved about a circle of persistent activity. The earth in the garden moved with its life of roots and bulbs, the very small ant creatures crept about from sunrise to sunset with their sand burdens, the gray branches of the olive opened to show their hidden treasures of leaves; the birds built; Luigi, the old farmer beyond the garden, continually loaded and unloaded his creaking yellow cart. Antonio absorbed this life energy with as much hunger as he ate his soup and figs.
“I will, also, do all day,” he decided, ready to try the adventure.
“I will make a little garden,” he chose one morning.
The spade was too huge for baby fingers, the frost-hardened ground demanded force in digging. Some hyacinth stalks, just pushing their odorous, purple way up through the mold, were broken by Antonio’s eager effort. Still, the little boy persisted, endeavoring to accomplish the task that his imagination pictured—a little round flower-bed of his own, made by his hands, and in which flowers of all colors might raise their heads overnight. Now he smelled them; now he could feel their velvet-soft petals.
“Stop! Come here, naughty Antonio. You cannot make a garden; you are too small. And you dirty your clean apron.”
Antonio dropped the spade as the words of his madre shrilled through the air. He sat down in a discouraged heap on the edge of the path. Always, his madre could persist in tasks, but he was continually interfered with. Why?
But with the buoyancy of childhood, the little man suddenly jumped up. A rattle of tin bells and a strident shriek of protesting, ungreased wheels were the prelude to Luigi’s approach. In his cart of oranges and lemons, with bunches of poppy and wheat stuck in the chinks, Luigi rode down the lane. His smiling face was as russet and wrinkled as an old nut, bits of miracle-hiding clod stuck to his blue smock. As he passed, he tossed an orange to Antonio.