The old man looked up with a scared expression.
"Ohime! Non posso!" he exclaimed, "I could not leave the villino. I shall die as I have lived, in the villino!"
"Well, you must do what is best pleasing to yourself," Antonia said. "All I desire is that you should be happy, and enjoy every comfort that money can buy."
She bent down and kissed the sunburnt forehead, so wrinkled and weather-beaten after the long life of toil. She asked Francesca to walk a little way with her; and they went out into the lane together.
"Your house looks comfortless even in sunshine," Antonia said. "It must be worse in winter!"
"Si, signorina. It is very cold in bad weather, but grandfather loves the villino."
"You might get a carpenter to mend the windows and put new hinges on the shutters. They look as if they would hardly shut."
"Indeed, signorina, 'tis long since our shutters have been shut. Grandfather is too poor to pay a carpenter. Nothing in the house has been mended since I can remember."
"But you have your cows and your vineyard. How is it that he is so poor?"
The girl shrugged her shoulders. She knew nothing.