The priest led Natale to the other end of the house.
Page [94.]
At Luigi’s heavy step on the stone flooring of the balcony, she lifted her face to his and something like a smile softened the expression of her stern features. Her black brows unbent and she made way for her son to enter by twisting her stool slightly and shifting her feet. Luigi passed by her and took up his stand in the gathering gloom of the little passage, his eyes fixed warily upon Natale. The little boy had released his hand from the priest’s outside the door, and now stood leaning against the railing of the balcony, staring frowningly at the woman.
“You are content to have it over with, Gigi?” the mother asked, glancing from man to boy and back again.
Luigi nodded his head.
“Give him something to eat and put him to bed,” he counseled in a low tone, “and do not argue with him to-night. To-morrow the sun will shine and he will begin to forget.”
Natale’s sharp ears caught every word, stolid as he looked. “Forget?” What did they think he would forget? Not Olga’s last words, certainly: “I would run after the wagon, if I were you.”
But, why was he not running now? No door, as yet, kept him prisoner. There was the empty street. Below ran the long, long white road. The night was coming down, and he was not afraid of the dark. Once out of sight, around one of the loops of the road, it would take but a moment to slip off the heavy shoes with their soles half an inch thick, and then on and on in the cool darkness he might run on light bare feet—“after the wagon.”
He thrilled with the thought as it flashed through his mind, but a flash of the same thought thrilled Sora Grazia at the same time, for just then she leaned forward and laying her hand on Natale’s arm, she drew him to her side.
“Once I had a curly-haired little boy of my own,” she said with a serious smile, “but after a while, he grew to be a man, and now he has brought to me another little boy. Natalino, I hope you will be as good a boy as my Gigi ever was.”