II
Once Lizina said to her father, 'Could one walk there?'
'Where, dear? Where?'
'Where they have put Cecco,' she answered, knowing nothing of distances or measurements or the meaning of travel or change of place.
She had never been farther than across the ferry to the other bank of the river.
Her father threw up his hands in despair.
'Lord! my treasure! why it is miles and miles and miles away! I don't know rightly even where—some place where the sun goes down.'
And her idea of walking thither seemed to him so stupefying, so amazing, so incredible, that he stared at her timorously, afraid that her brain was going wrong. He had never gone anywhere in all his life.
'Oh, my pretty, what should we do, you and I, in a strange place?' moaned Fringuello, weeping with fear at the thought of change and with grief at the worn, fevered face lifted up to his. 'Never have I stirred from here since I was born, nor you. To move to and fro—that is for well-to-do folks, not for us; and when you are so ill, my poor little one, that you can scarcely stand on your feet—if you were to die on the way——'