“Little sinner!” said Tito, pinching her chin, “you have not said half your prayers. I will punish you by not looking at your baby; it is ugly.”
Tessa did not like those words, even though Tito was smiling. She had some pouting distress in her face, as she said, bending anxiously over the baby—
“Ah, it is not true! He is prettier than anything. You do not think he is ugly. You will look at him. He is even prettier than when you saw him before—only he’s asleep, and you can’t see his eyes or his tongue, and I can’t show you his hair—and it grows—isn’t that wonderful? Look at him! It’s true his face is very much all alike when he’s asleep, there is not so much to see as when he’s awake. If you kiss him very gently, he won’t wake: you want to kiss him, is it not true?”
He satisfied her by giving the small mummy a butterfly kiss, and then putting his hand on her shoulder and turning her face towards him, said, “You like looking at the baby better than looking at your husband, you false one!”
She was still kneeling, and now rested her hands on his knee, looking up at him like one of Fra Lippo Lippi’s round-cheeked adoring angels.
“No,” she said, shaking her head; “I love you always best, only I want you to look at the bambino and love him; I used only to want you to love me.”
“And did you expect me to come again so soon?” said Tito, inclined to make her prattle. He still felt the effects of the agitation he had undergone—still felt like a man who has been violently jarred; and this was the easiest relief from silence and solitude.
“Ah, no,” said Tessa, “I have counted the days—to-day I began at my right thumb again—since you put on the beautiful chain-coat, that Messer San Michele gave you to take care of you on your journey. And you have got it on now,” she said, peeping through the opening in the breast of his tunic. “Perhaps it made you come back sooner.”
“Perhaps it did, Tessa,” he said. “But don’t mind the coat now. Tell me what has happened since I was here. Did you see the tents in the Prato, and the soldiers and horsemen when they passed the bridges—did you hear the drums and trumpets?”
“Yes, and I was rather frightened, because I thought the soldiers might come up here. And Monna Lisa was a little afraid too, for she said they might carry our kids off; she said it was their business to do mischief. But the Holy Madonna took care of us, for we never saw one of them up here. But something has happened, only I hardly dare tell you, and that is what I was saying more Aves for.”