"Madonna mia," gasped Vincenza, "it is beyond belief."
For five days Luigi stood four hours each afternoon, bent forward, to the lifting of a cardboard block, while Hugh Keswick painted, as he had not painted for months, the tense muscles under the olive skin, the strong neck and shoulders. The Building of the Temple advanced rapidly. And Luigi's arms and back ached so that each night Vincenza had to rub them with the oil which now cost ten cents more in the shop of Biaggio.
On the Sixth day Luigi refused to go.
"I tell thee it is a stupidness—to stand all day with the pain in the back. For what? Fifty cents. It is a work for old men and children——"
"But thou canst not make the money, sitting in thy chair, with thy feet on the stove, like now——"
"Dost thou wish then that I have every night the knives in my back? If so——"
"Not so, caro, but——"
"Listen. You understand nothing and talk as a woman. A lady comes to my house. She says—you have no work, here is money. Then she comes and says—here is work. But at this work I make not so much as before she gave; and in addition, I have the pain in the back. Ecco, when she comes again, I no longer have the work. It is her job to give away the money. She is not a fool, that Lady in Brown Fur. It is that I make her a kindness. Not so?"
"As thou sayest," and Vincenza went on with her endless washing.