“I have called to see you,” he answered. “Me, I am not musician to-night.” Then as he saw my evident disappointment, he said, “but if I am not welcome for myself, I can go.”
I felt really sorry for him, as his smiling face had become so suddenly mournful and stormy-looking. So I said:
“Oh, I’m really glad to see you,” and I tried to smile as if I were. He came up to me with a kind of rush and said excitedly:
“Marion, I love-a you! I love-a you! I love-a you! Give me the smile again. That smile is like music to me. I love-a you!”
I was amazed and also alarmed.
“Mr. Benevenuto,” I said, backing away from him, “please go away.”
I thought of what Miss Darling had said, that Italian men were not to be played with. I had merely smiled at Benny, with what a volcanic result! He was coming nearer and nearer to me, and he kept talking all the time, in his soft, pleading way:
“Marion, I have love-a you from the first day I have look at you. You look-a like my countrywomen, Marion. We will getta married. Soon I will make plenty money. We will have maybe little house and little bebby.”
I could stand it no longer. He was only a boy after all, and somehow he made me think of the little beggar boy I had pinched when I gave him the bread and sugar. I pushed him away from me, and I said:
“Don’t talk such foolishness. I am old enough to be your mother.” I think I was about three years older than he.