'Because there are no such miraculous medicines.'
'Oh, sir, you mean you don't wish to do me this kindness. Think if they take him for three years!—three years! What could I do without him for three years? And, then, he won't go, sir! If you knew what he says——'
'I told her,' Raffaele interrupted emphatically, pulling down his waistcoat, a common guappa trick, 'that if they take me by force, we will hold a little shooting; someone will be wounded, they take me to prison, and what happens? A year's imprisonment at most. I must go to San Francesco some day, at any rate.'
'Don't speak that way—don't say that!' she called out in admiring terror. 'Beg the professor to give you the medicine.'
'Are you to be married soon?' asked the doctor, who no longer wondered at anything, from knowing the people so well.
'Very soon,' Carmela answered by herself, while Raffaele looked before him.
'When are you to be?'
'When we get the terno,' she retorted, quietly and with certainty.
'Then, not for some time yet,' the doctor replied, laughing.
'No, no, sir; Don Pasqualino De Feo, the medium, has promised me a safe number. We will be married very soon. But you must get Raffaele off.'