For two days Rinaldo adhered to his resolution of spending all the daylight hours at his easel, but by the third morning his depression was so great that he resolved to resume the good habit of going to early Mass. He had made one or two trespassing excursions to Fra Tommaso's loggia in the hope of catching a glimpse of Giannella at her window; but her place was empty and there was a strange air of deadness, of unnatural orderliness about the few details of the room which came within his line of vision. At once a thousand fears assailed him. Was she ill? Had she gone away? Had his diffident little greeting brought trouble upon her? He had been wildly happy over her mute answer to it, but now he began to ponder as to whether it had not some hidden meaning which he, unversed in flower language, had perhaps not understood. He must find out at once. Very likely Sora Amalia could tell him. Women set store by these pretty mysteries, and although he could hardly imagine the stout mistress of the dairy as sending a love letter in flowers to its red-faced master, yet she had been young once, and probably very sentimental. He had heard that sentimental people were usually inclined to grow fat. He would run down and ask her, very guardedly of course, whether she could help him. And then he might get some tidings of Giannella; she and Mariuccia called there almost every day for one thing or another.
So when evening drew on and the sun was sinking, a ball of smoldering fire, behind heavy clouds in the west, Rinaldo said good-night to the pink-cheeked cardinal and descended to the shop, where darkness would have reigned already but for one smoky lamp. The heat inside was suffocating, and Sora Amalia, as she put things in order for the night, mopped her heated face with the corner of a long-suffering apron which seemed to have been applied to many and alien uses during the day. The good woman brightened up at the sight of a customer so late and bustled about joyfully to get the eggs and cheese which Rinaldo made the pretext for his visit.
"The signorino does his own cooking?" she inquired; "that must be a great trouble. It is all to his advantage in one way, of course, since he would never get such miraculously fresh stuff as this at a trattoria. But it must make many steps, much work—and in this hot weather too."
"It saves me four hot walks a day," Rinaldo replied, "and also much money. Those trattori are all brigands. They have an art, most diabolical, of dressing up coarse food in disguising sauces and giving it grand names. It is like a veglione in carnival—you never know what is really under the mask. I am sure I have many a time eaten goat's flesh and paid for lamb."
"Of course you have," said Sora Amalia sympathetically. "Poverino! What you want is a nice clever little wife to see to things for you. Has your good Signora Mamma not chosen one for you yet?"
"My Signora Mamma is a long way off," Rinaldo answered, "and, to tell you a secret, I mean to choose a wife for myself. How does one go about it, Sora Amalia? I am shy, and dreadfully afraid of making some young lady very angry by my stupidity. How did Sor Augusto begin when he wanted to make love to you?"
Sora Amalia crossed her arms over her ample bosom and meditated for a moment. "I am trying to remember," she said; "ah yes—he was in the pork trade in those days, and he sent me a paper of sausages. They were a cream! I ate them all, and, capperi, but I was ill afterwards!" She chuckled at the recollection.
This was a long way off from the language of flowers. Rinaldo tried another opening. "How sweet your carnations smell," he remarked, pulling one out of the glass and dangling it before his nose. "Garofoli—what does the name mean, I wonder?"
"Married happiness," she replied promptly. "Are you looking for numbers to play in the lotto?"
He caught at the idea. "Why yes, that is just what I do want. I thought of a little ambo for next Saturday."