He longed to go and tell her himself lest she should hear it from some gossip, but he could not leave his work. Yet, he could not bear the child to learn it first from the careless chattering of neighbouring gossips.
When he had discharged the load he carried, he fastened the mule to a post by the water-side, and said to a fellow-carter, 'Will you watch him a moment whilst I run home?' and on the man's assenting he flew with lightning speed along the road and up the staircase of his house.
Lizina dropped her sewing in amazement as he burst into the room and stood on the threshold with a look which frightened her.
She ran to him quickly.
'Babbo! Babbo! What is the matter?' she cried to him. Then, before he could answer, she said timidly, under her breath, 'Is anything wrong—with Cecco?'
Then Fringuello turned his head away and wept aloud.
He had hoped the child had forgotten. He knew now that she had remembered only too well. All through the year which had gone by since the departure of the youth she had been as happy as a field-mouse undisturbed in the wheat. The grain was not ripe yet for her, but she was sure that it would be, and that her harvest would be plenteous. She had always been sure, quite sure, that Cecco would come back; and now, in an instant, she understood that he was dead.
Lizina said little then or at any time; but the little gay life of her changed, grew dull, seemed to shrink into itself and wither up as a flower will when a worm is at its root. She had been so sure that Cecco would return!
'She is so young; soon it will not matter to her,' her father told himself.
But the months went by and the seasons, and she did not recover her bloom, her mirth, her elasticity; her small face was always grave and pale. She went about her work in the same way, and was docile, and industrious, and uncomplaining, but something was wrong with her. She did not laugh, she did not sing; she seldom even spoke unless she was spoken to first. He tried to persuade himself that there was no change in her, but he knew that he tried to feed himself on falsehood. He might as well have thought his lemon-tree unaltered if he had found it withered up by fire.