Jeli shook his head and reflected. Then he opened his hoard and unfolded the paper which bore the written name.
"It must be that it says 'Mara'; Don Gesualdo, the campiere,[7] has read it; and fra Cola, when he came down here begging for beans."
"He who knows how to write," he went on saying, "is like one who preserves words in his tinder-box and can carry them in his pocket, and even send them this way and that."
"Now what are you going to do with that piece of paper that you can't read?" asked Alfonso.
Jeli shrugged his shoulders, but kept on carefully folding his written leaf to put away in his heap of odds and ends.
He had known la Mara ever since she was a little girl. Their acquaintance had begun in a pitched battle once when they met down in the valley, both of them after blackberries. The little girl, knowing that she was "within her rights," had seized Jeli by the neck as if he were a thief. For awhile they exchanged blows on the slope—"You one, I one,"—as the cooper does on the hoops of his barrels; but when they got tired of it they gradually calmed down, though they still had each other by the hair.
"Who are you?" demanded Mara.
And when Jeli with less breeding refused to tell who he was,—
"I am Mara, the daughter of Massaro Agrippino, who is the keeper of all these fields here."
Jeli then let his grasp relax, and the little girl set to work to pick up the blackberries that had fallen during their struggle, now and then glancing with curiosity at her antagonist.