"No. Once I signed the paper in English and it cost me two dollars; not again. I said I could not write, and she wrote for me."
"Bene," Biaggio nodded approval. "It is not thy writing. It can do nothing."
"Perhaps it is because I voted twice at the election last week? But already I have taken the money for that. It was one only dollar. I——"
"Non, non, it is not that. Listen!" Slowly Biaggio shut both eyes, as if to keep out the tremendous light that had dawned upon him, and nodded his head knowingly. Then he opened them, shifted his huge bulk upright, and clapped Luigi on the knee.
"Thou art in great luck friend," he cried, "and it is well that thou hast asked me. If thou hadst gone to another, to a man not honest, who knows? Listen. In our country when a rich man dies, he leaves always something for the poor, but he leaves it to the church and it is the fathers who give away the money. Corpo di Bacco! what that means thou knowest well. Sometimes a little gets to the poor. Sometimes—— But in this country it is not so. He leaves to a society. There are many. And they pay the women, and sometimes the men, to give away the money——"
"Santo Cristo," gasped Luigi, "they pay to give away the money?"
"For them it is a job like any other. Didst think it was for love of thee or the red curls of thy Vincenza?"
"Marvelous, most marvelous," murmured Luigi, "and it is possible then for all people to get——"
"Ma, that no one can explain," and Biaggio shrugged his shoulders; in a gesture of absolute inability to solve the problem.
"She will come then again, this lady?" Luigi leaned forward eagerly. He was beginning to grasp it.