“It is true; I forgot,” said Tessa, lifting her hands and clasping them. “But Monna Lisa is deaf, and I live with her. She’s a kind old woman, and I’m not frightened at her. And we live very well: we have plenty of nice things. I can have nuts if I like. And I’m not obliged to work now. I used to have to work, and I didn’t like it; but I liked feeding the mules, and I should like to see poor Giannetta, the little mule, again. We’ve only got a goat and two kids, and I used to talk to the goat a good deal, because there was nobody else but Monna Lisa. But now I’ve got something else—can you guess what it is?”
She drew her head back, and looked with a challenging smile at Baldassarre, as if she had proposed a difficult riddle to him.
“No,” said he, putting aside his bowl, and looking at her dreamily. It seemed as if this young prattling thing were some memory come back out of his own youth.
“You like me to talk to you, don’t you?” said Tessa, “but you must not tell anybody. Shall I fetch you a bit of cold sausage?”
He shook his head, but he looked so mild now that Tessa felt quite at her ease.
“Well, then, I’ve got a little baby. Such a pretty bambinetto, with little fingers and nails! Not old yet; it was born at the Nativita, Monna Lisa says. I was married one Nativita, a long, long while ago, and nobody knew. O Santa Madonna! I didn’t mean to tell you that!”
Tessa set up her shoulders and bit her lip, looking at Baldassarre as if this betrayal of secrets must have an exciting effect on him too. But he seemed not to care much; and perhaps that was in the nature of strangers.
“Yes,” she said, carrying on her thought aloud, “you are a stranger; you don’t live anywhere or know anybody, do you?”
“No,” said Baldassarre, also thinking aloud, rather than consciously answering, “I only know one man.”
“His name is not Nofri, is it?” said Tessa, anxiously.