Marta grew nervous.
"I cannot sing," she cried, "I have no music in my voice, but I—"
"Never mind your voice! Pappina will do the singing. Are you both ready? Then why don't you begin?" Guiseppe spoke impatiently.
Marta tremblingly began. The words were barely out of her mouth when Pappina repeated them eagerly, but always with an "ah" at the end making them all like Italian words. Marta smiled at the pronunciation, but Guiseppe was delighted.
"Bravo, bravo!" he cried. "Teach it well, Marta! She can sing it here for all the English and Americans we meet. It will charm them to hear her sing in their own tongue; it will mean money, and it's money that will take us to America."
Childlike, Pappina soon grew tired of trying to learn the song. She wanted to be journeying on to new people, sights, and scenes. Guiseppe, too, became impatient to be off in quest of that which would take them to "the land of money," as he called America again and again.
He was walking, as usual, with bowed head, his eyes on the ground, when he suddenly sprang to the side of the road and with the toe of his boot pushed back the dry grass that was partially concealing a string of gold beads. He picked them up.
"Aha!" he cried, holding them up for view, "they are gold! Luck is with us. Gold! I can sell them." He put them into a pocket of his coat.
"Guiseppe, I want them. Give them to me." Pappina dug her little sun–browned hand into his pocket and brought up the bright beads. Guiseppe snatched them from her. Pappina stamped her foot. "Guiseppe, I want those beads!"
"You can't have them."