“Well, it is for this, carissima, only this: I am afraid to tell him just now that I am married, because he said he would put me out—do you understand?—said he would put me out of the shop and Casa Di Bello if I got married. In a few weeks——”
“Bah!” she said, waving a forefinger in Neapolitan fashion, meaning that she was not to be taken in. “I never believed you when you talked of Casa Di Bello. Do you think it was for that I married you?”
“Wait, wait, my Juno. Pazienza. The day will come when you will be padrona of that house.”
“Enough,” she said. “I am tired of this nonsense. What are you going to do?”
“Listen,” said Bertino, delighted at the success of his garbled version of Di Bello’s threat. “This is my idea: You do not like Mulberry too well, nor do I. Moreover, rents are very high here, because these animals find it hard to get in anywhere else, and the landlords rob them. But with us it is different. We, for example, are signori, are we not?”
“Ah, yes; I am a signora.”
“Very well. Now I will tell you the rest: In the upper city there are apartments, small and fine, that we could take. You know Giacomo Goldoni, the cornetist at La Scala? Well, he lives in a place like that, he and his wife, just like Americans.”
“Where is it?”
“In One Hundred and Eleventh Street of the East. Do you know where that is? Well, you can find it. To-day you shall go and choose the place. Here is money, the first that you have received from your husband. Do you think I have been fool enough to give the money I brought from Italy to the pothouses? Not I. When I need money I go to the Bank of Risparmio. See what kind of a husband you have! Neither you nor any one else knows how much I have in the bank. I will tell you. Before drawing this five yesterday I had fifty-three dollars.”
Juno expressed her contempt in a glance, but she closed her fingers on the greenback.