“Are there many English in Venice, Tita?”
The gondolier, lounging like a brilliant-hued lizard, shrugged his shoulders. “Bellissima, there are hundreds in the season. They come and go. They are all lasagnoni, these Englishmen!”
Teresa’s sigh checked itself. Tita suddenly turned his head. Across the piazzetta a crowd was gathering. It centered before the shop at whose front the five-year-old fig-seller was used to watch for her.
“He fell from the scaffolding!” said a voice.
“If it should be little Pasquale!” cried Teresa, and springing out, ran quickly forward. Tita waited to secure the gondola before he followed her.
A sad accident had happened. Before the calle a platform had been erected from which spectators might watch the flotillas of the carnival. Little Pasquale’s delight was a tame sparrow, whose home was a wicker cage, and climbing to sun his pet when he had been left to tend the empty shop, the child had slipped and fallen to the pavement.
Teresa broke through the circle of bystanders and knelt by the tumbled little body, looking at the tiny face now so waxen. The neighbors thronged about, stupefied and hindering. A woman ran to fetch the mother, gossiping with a neighbor. Another called loudly for a priest.
The girl, looking up, was bewildered by the tumult. “He must be got in,” she murmured, half helplessly, for the people ringed them round.
A voice answered close beside her: “I will carry him, Signorina”—and a form she knew bent beside her, and very gently lifted the small bundle in his arms.
Teresa’s heart bounded. Through these days she had longed to hear that voice again how vainly! Now, in this moment, she was brought suddenly close to him. She ceased to hear the sounds about her—saw only him. She sprang up and led the way through the press, down the close damp calle and to the shop where the child lived.