At length they reached home. The porter sat sleeping in his chair at the great door, and a family of beggars, four or five women and children, lay curled up outside on the curbstone.
Inside all was deliciously cool and tranquil. Dinner was on the table; for the servants had been watching for them, and had brought the soup in directly, and they sat down with
appetites improved by the delay. The Signora poured out some wine for herself.
“The people here say that you should take a little wine before your soup,” she said. “My former padrona told me the nuns in the convents she knew always did. I don’t know why it is good for the stomach, but bow to their superior wisdom.”
“Doesn’t the hair on the top of my head look unusually bright?” Bianca asked after a while. She was still thinking of the sacred hand that had rested there, still feeling its gentle pressure.
The others looked, not understanding.
“Why, your veil covers it,” Isabel said. “But there’s a bright garnet and gold pin at the top.”
Bianca lifted her arms to loosen the veil, took the gold hairpin out and kissed it. “He must have touched it,” she said, “and so it has been blessed. Do you know, Signora, what thought came into my mind at the moment? I thought as he touched me, ‘It is the hand that holds the keys of purgatory and of heaven!’”
“My own thought!” her friend exclaimed. “I had the same benediction once, and it set me rhyming. I do not set up for a poet, you know, but there are feelings that will sing in spite of one. This was one, and I must show you the lines some time soon, to see if they express you. I don’t know where they are.”
“I know where something of yours is,” Bianca said eagerly. “I saw it in your blotting-book, and had to call up all my honesty not to read it. Reward me now! I will bring it.”