“No,” said Baldassarre, noticing her look of fear. “Is that your husband’s name?”
That mistaken supposition was very amusing to Tessa. She laughed and clapped her hands as she said—
“No, indeed! But I must not tell you anything about my husband. You would never think what he is—not at all like Nofri!”
She laughed again at the delightful incongruity between the name of Nofri—which was not separable from the idea of the cross-grained stepfather—and the idea of her husband.
“But I don’t see him very often,” she went on, more gravely. “And sometimes I pray to the Holy Madonna to send him oftener, and once she did. But I must go back to my bimbo now. I’ll bring it to show you to-morrow. You would like to see it. Sometimes it cries and makes a face, but only when it’s hungry, Monna Lisa says. You wouldn’t think it, but Monna Lisa had babies once, and they are all dead old men. My husband says she will never die now, because she’s so well dried. I’m glad of that, for I’m fond of her. You would like to stay here to-morrow, shouldn’t you?”
“I should like to have this place to come and rest in, that’s all,” said Baldassarre. “I would pay for it, and harm nobody.”
“No, indeed; I think you are not a bad old man. But you look sorry about something. Tell me, is there anything you shall cry about when I leave you by yourself? I used to cry once.”
“No, child; I think I shall cry no more.”
“That’s right; and I’ll bring you some breakfast, and show you the bimbo. Good-night.”
Tessa took up her bowl and lantern, and closed the door behind her. The pretty loving apparition had been no more to Baldassarre than a faint rainbow on the blackness to the man who is wrestling in deep waters. He hardly thought of her again till his dreamy waking passed into the more vivid images of disturbed sleep.