"Have you many visitors over there?" asked the hostess, after a pause.
"They are just beginning to come. We have had hard times till now. The bathers have not arrived yet."
"The spring was late. Have you done better here in Capri?"
"I should not have managed to get macaroni twice a week if it had depended on the boat. Now and then a letter to take to Naples, or a gentleman who wanted a row on the sea or to fish--that was all. But you know that my uncle has got the great orange garden, and is a rich man. 'Tonino,' he said to me, 'as long as I live you shall not want, and afterwards you will be cared for.' So I got through the winter with God's help."
"Has your uncle children?"
"No; he was never married; he was long in foreign countries where he managed to scrape many a good piaster together; now he has an idea of setting up a large fishery, and is going to put me at the head of the whole affair to see that he gets his rights."
"So you are a made man, Antonino." The young boatman shrugged his shoulders. "Each one has his burden to bear," he said. Then he sprang up and looked right and left at the weather, though he must have known that there was but one weather-side.
"Let me bring you another flask, your uncle can pay for it," said the hostess.
"Only one glass more, my head is warm already."
"It won't get into your head, you can drink as much as you like of it. Here is my husband just coming, you must sit down and chat with him a bit."