“It is a blessing to have sight of you!” said he.
“Oh, friend Turridu, I was told that you came back around the first of the month.”
“And I too was told many other things besides!” he answered. “So it is true that you are going to marry Alfio the carter?”
“If such is the will of God!” answered Lola, drawing together beneath her chin the two comers of her kerchief.
“You do the will of God by taking or leaving as it pays you best!
And it was the will of God that I should come home from so tar away to hear such fine news, Mistress Lola!”
The poor fellow still tried to make a show of indifference, but his voice had grown husky; and he walked on ahead of the girl with a swagger that kept the tassel of his cap dancing back and forth upon his shoulders. It really hurt the girl to see him with such a long face, but she had not the heart to deceive him with fair words.
“Listen, friend Turridu,” she said at length, “you must let me go on to join the other girls. What would folks be saying if we were seen together?”
“That is true,” replied Turridu; “now that you are to many Alfio, who has four mules in his stable, it wont do to set people talking. My mother, on the other hand, poor woman, had to sell our one bay mule, and that little bit of vineyard down yonder on the highroad, during the time that I was soldiering.
Window to courtyard
The time is gone when the Lady Bertha span; and you no longer give a thought to the time when we used to talk together from window to courtyard, and when you gave me this handkerchief just before I went away, into which God knows how many tears I wept at going so far that the very name of our land seemed forgotten. But now good-bye, Mistress Lola, let us square accounts and put an end to our friendship.”
Mistress Lola and the carter were married; and on the following Sunday she showed herself on her balcony, with her hands spread out upon her waist, to show off the big rings of gold that her husband had given her.
Turridu kept passing and repassing through the narrow little street, with his pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, pretending in-difference and ogling the girls; but inwardly he was eating his heart out to think that Lolas husband had all that gold, and that she pretended not even to notice him as he passed by.
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