"Of a surety, cara, the saints are good. Never before didst thou work before April. In the new house we will keep for ourselves two rooms.
"These people have the 'pull' even more than the alderman, Biaggio says," replied Luigi with a dreamy look in his eyes. "It may be that from this work I shall take three dollars each day."
"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.
"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----"
"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.
But when the week passed and the Lady in Brown Fur did not come, Luigi's forehead wrinkled with the effort to understand. When the second had gone, Luigi was openly troubled. When the third was half over, he again took his hat and went over to the shop of Biaggio.
As before Biaggio listened attentively, his eyes closed, until Luigi had finished. Then he opened them, made a clicking noise with his tongue, and laid one finger along the side of his nose.
"Holy Body of Christ," he said softly, "in business thou hast the head like a rock. In one curl of thy Vincenza there is more sense than in all thy great body. Did I not tell thee to be careful, and it would stop only when thou didst wish. And now, without to ask my advice, you make the stupidness, bah----"