Only the little girl, who had laughed at him and flouted him as they sat on the wall by the river, did think of it constantly, tenaciously, silently. It seemed to her horrible to leave him all alone in some unfamiliar, desolate place, where no step was ever heard of any whom he had ever known. She said nothing of it, for she saw that even her father did not understand; but she brooded over the thought of it constantly, turning to and fro in her mind the little she had ever known or heard of the manner and means by which people transported themselves from place to place. There were many, of course, in the village who could have told her how others travelled, but she was too shy to speak of the matter even to the old man of the ferry, in whose boat, when it was moored to a poula driven in the sand, she had spent many an hour of playtime. She had always been a babbling, communicative, merry child, chattering like a starling or a swift, until now. Now she spoke rarely, and never of the thing of which her heart was full.
One day her father looked from her pinched, wan face to the bright green leaves of the flourishing lemon-tree, and muttered an oath.
'Day and night, for as many years as you are old, I have taken care of that tree, and sheltered it and fed it; and now it alone is fair to see and strong, whilst you—verily, oh verily, Lizina, I could find it in my heart to take a billhook and hew it down for its cruelty in being glad and full of vigour, whilst you pinch and fade, day by day, before my sight!'
Lizina shook her head, and looked at the tree which had been the companion of her fifteen years of life.
'It's a good tree, babbo!' she said gently. 'Think how much it has given us; how many things you bought me with the lemon money! Oh! it is very good; do not ever say a word against it; but—but—if you are in anger with it, there is a thing which you might do. You have always kept the money which it brought for me?'
'Surely, dear. I have always thought it yours,' he answered, wondering where her thoughts were tending.
'Then—then,' said Lizina timidly, 'if it be as mine really, and you see it no more with pleasure in its place there, will you sell it, and with the price of it take me to where Cecco lies?'
Her eyes were intensely wistful; her cheeks grew momentarily red in her eagerness; she put both hands to her chest and tried to stop the cough which began to choke her words. Her father stared, incredulous that he could hear aright.
'Sell the tree?' he asked stupidly.
Not in his uttermost needs had the idea of selling it come to him. He held it in a superstitious awe.