“You have had a long day of it?”
“Yes, Signore,” Oreste smiled with the satisfied air of one who has done a good day’s work.
“I suppose you have made a handful of money,” continued the Signore, severely.
Oreste shrugged his shoulders. “Not great things,—but, altro, I am content.”
The Signore shrugged in his turn. “Each to his own mind. Your sposina has also made a long day; I saw her just now.”
“Ah, yes; it is a long way to Vincigliata, when one must walk. The Signore’s commands?”
“None.”
Truly, the Signorina Americana, if this was her work, had small reason to be proud of it. The Signore’s frown enveloped even the blue envelope, at which he stood staring long after Oreste had left the room.
And so it ran through the spring months,—the mournfully beautiful Tuscan spring. The nightingales in the villa gardens sang and sang, at dusk, in the moonlight, and at dawn, and the fireflies glittered all through the darkness up and down the olive slopes. An intenser life quickened in the little community as the summer stirred in the veins of her children. The youths went singing up and down the hills, and the girls and women lingered over their water jars at the fountain in the square. For what is it to be poor in the summer time?
Sometimes the Signore, lying awake at night, heard Oreste’s mellow voice as he passed by to the little house. But through all this gayety of being Gioja stole silently and dreamily, and the whisper of turned heads and eyes askance followed her. For there were the ever-recurring festas, when Oreste went to the city, and where then did Oreste’s sposa go? That is what the community would like to know; for the tale of her grandmother was quite too large for the village throat. She kept her secret well,—yes; but there is only one kind of a secret possible to the Italian mind.