"No."
"Your nightingale isn't dead?"
"Don't you hear him singing?"
"Perhaps our neighbor Magnani's big tom-cat has eaten up your turtle-dove?"
"I would like to see him try it! I tell you that I don't bother my head about Signor Magnani or his cat."
The tone in which she uttered Magnani's name made Michel prick up his ears, and, upon glancing at his little sister's face, he saw that she had her eyes fixed, not upon her work—although her head was bent—but upon a wooden gallery where Magnani usually worked, opposite Mila's chamber. At that moment Magnani was walking along his gallery. He did not look at Mila's window, and Mila did not look at her work.
"Mila, my darling child," said Michel, taking both her hands and kissing them, "do you see that young man with the absent-minded air?"
"Well," Mila replied, as the blood came and went in her cheeks, "what about him?"
"I want to tell you, my child, that if your heart is ever inclined to love, you must not think of that young man."
"What nonsense!" said the girl, shaking her head and trying hard to laugh. "He is the last man of whom I should ever think, I tell you that!"