The song stopped. Maria Angelina turned towards him a face of flushed surprise. He discovered her quaintly with a jar of pickled frogs in her hand.
"Maria Angelina, what are you doing?"
"But these, Signor—what are these?"
"These? Oh—not for food, Maria Angelina—even in my most desperate moments. . . . Maria Angelina, are you going to marry him?"
She did not drop the frogs. Very carefully she put them back but with a shaking hand. All the rosy sparkle was swept out of her. Her eyes were averted. She looked suddenly harassed, stubborn, almost furtive.
No quick denial came springing from her.
"I do not know," she told him painfully.
"You do not know?"
There was something in the young man's voice that made her glance rise to his.
"Oh, it is not that I care for him!" said Maria Angelina ingenuously.