“Yes!” she answered slowly.
“I think Bianca is changed from what she used to be,” he said afterward to one of the family. “It seems to me that I remember her gay and bright, like Isabel; but she has grown quiet and gentle, little by little, and so gradually that I do not know when the change began.”
The person whom he addressed tried to give him the comfort and reassurance which his anxiety evidently pleaded for. She pointed out that one had but to look at the two girls to see at once the difference in their temperaments; that Isabel's shorter and more compact form proved a stronger and more aggressive vitality than her sister's willowy slenderness was capable of; that the very shape of their faces—a delicate oval in the one and a full oval in the other—was another proof of difference; and that, moreover, Bianca, being the elder, had been of an age to be impressed by her mother's death, while Isabel was still too young.
“And I find yet another reason,” the comforter continued, turning mentor. “Your frequently-expressed regret for your wife, and the habit you have of referring to her love for Spain and her home-sickness, cannot fail to sadden so sensitive a heart as Bianca's, while Isabel thinks that it is merely a ‘way you have got into,’ as she would express it.”
It was, perhaps, rather a severe speech; but when a person contracts a habit of making a mournful luxury of his troubles, and of perpetually setting up his mourning standard beside the red, white, and blue of those who at least try to be cheerful, it does no harm to let him know that the effect is not enlivening.
Well, we were settled in our summer quarters, and had just finished our first dinner there, when the historian of the party made a prudent suggestion.
“Since we are beginning a new life with new people, I think that we should have a clear understanding about everything, so as to save trouble at the end,” she said.
Her ears were still ringing with the din of battle which had accompanied their exit from their former home—the loud voice of the padrona demanding payment for broken chairs and tables that had dropped in pieces the first time they were touched; the vociferous porter, who insisted on having money because he had snatched Isabel's reticule from her hand, in spite of her, and carried it a dozen steps; the small but very shrill boy, whom they had no recollection of ever having seen before, and who wanted to be paid for they knew not what; the hysterical donna, who expected that her heart, lacerated because her services [pg 663] had not been re-engaged, would be soothed by the gift of a few extra lire; and a half-dozen beggars crying for “qualche cosa.”
And so “it might be as well to have everything arranged at the beginning,” remarked this prudent person.
“I settled about the furniture before you came in to dinner,” Isabel said. “I had the whole family up, and before their eyes, with papa as witness, I shook and leaned on every table and cabinet, and sat down in every chair as hard as I could. Two chairs dropped, and are taken out for repair, which will cost us nothing. And I have ordered out all the paper bouquets with tall glass cases over them, and all the ornamental cups and saucers. But I think we may as well tell them that if they send begging people up to us, we will deduct what we give from the rent. Papa says he has made a careful reckoning, and finds that if we give a soldo to each ragged beggar in the street, and half a lira to each well-dressed beggar who comes up, we shall be ourselves reduced to beggary in six months.”