Then Mario, nothing loath, and with many wide gestures, told how the youthful Gian-Luca had lighted his first match, and from that he must go on to tell other glories concerning Gian-Luca’s career.
“A marvelous waiter he was,” declared Mario. “He had all that a waiter should possess—alacrity, dignity, persuasiveness and charm; and his smile was enough to turn sour cream to sweet, and his wonderful eyes when they rested upon you would convince you that old cat was chicken.”
“Ma, per carita, leave me in peace,” snapped Teresa, who was struggling to pick up a difficult stitch; after which she just sat and said nothing at all, so what was the good of their talking?
However, when Millo arrived it was different, for even Teresa could not disregard Millo. “I have come to discuss your grandson,” he announced, so Teresa was forced to discuss him. “This nonsense has got to stop,” declared Millo. “Gian-Luca has a bee in his bonnet. Now you, cara signora, must chase out that bee; you must send for him at once and find out what is wrong, and the sooner you do so the better, I think; it is April, and Gian-Luca left me in February, and ever since that the man has been idle—something is terribly wrong.”
Teresa’s defiant black eyes met his wise ones, and those wise, kindly eyes looked quite stern. “He is your grandson, after all,” he said firmly; “Maddalena is weak, she cannot control him, it is time that you took a hand.”
“As you will,” she replied, smoothing her knitting; “but my grandson is not easy to manage—he has always been strangely unlike my people—I do not suppose he will listen to reason. However, I will certainly see him.”
“You too have a will of your own, signora—” Millo told her, smiling slightly. “But when you have seen him,” he continued more gravely, “I should like to hear about his plans for the future—I am anxious about him, he has served me too well for me not to feel a certain affection—”
Then he laughed, for Millo always laughed at himself when he heard his heart talking to him.
After he had gone, Teresa’s mouth hardened, and her hand shot out for her stick—a constant humiliation, this stick; but the winter had brought her bad pains in her knees, rheumatism according to the doctor. She got up slowly, grunting a little as she did so, and made her way into the shop. Standing quite still, she surveyed those possessions which she now shared with Francesco Millo.
The Casa Boselli was crowded that morning, people must wait to be served, and this in spite of the eight smart assistants who ran hither and thither dressed in white. Beside the cashier stood a stern-faced young person in a golf coat, and the young person’s locks had been shorn. In the top buttonhole of her knitted jacket showed one or two tiny war ribbons. This young person was very proficient in all things; she could add up long rows of complicated figures by merely flicking her pen, she could type with a speed that made you feel giddy—she had shorthand, Italian, French and some German, and just now she was keeping an eye on the cashier who had only been recently engaged. She was hard, she was clever, and Millo had secured her, scenting a valuable find.
As Teresa surveyed this importation of Millo’s, her lips grew exceedingly grim, and she forced her old knees to assume a straight angle, and she swung the offending stick under her arm—just to show that she did not need it. But down it must come, that accursed stick, because of the weak left knee, and the capable young person left the cash desk—for among other things she had nursed in the war—
“You shouldn’t stand more than you can help,” she remarked, fetching a chair for Teresa.
Teresa thanked her coldly, refusing the chair; and Teresa must thank her in English—for she would not admit that this capable young person could really understand good Italian.
“You are now doing, what?” inquired Teresa abruptly.
And the young person slightly raised her eyebrows: “I’m showing Miss Gibson the ropes at the moment—don’t forget your medicine, will you, signora? And I’m quite sure the doctor would want you to rest—” That was how she answered Teresa.
The Casa Boselli! The dear Casa Boselli! The beloved Casa Boselli! with its hams and its paste and its cheeses and its olives and its coils and bolsters of salame! The friendly, dark, odorous Casa Boselli, smelling of Chianti and oil; smelling of sawdust and pickles and garlic, of sour brown bread and newly-ground coffee; of split peas and lentils and pods of vanilla—of people and Fabio’s boot-blacking. Who would have known the old Casa Boselli in this large, overlighted, over-ventilated store; this brass-bound, marble-faced, red-tiled emporium—three shops it was now, that had been turned into one, the top floors supported by green marble columns in place of the party walls. Why, Fabio would have gasped at his resurrection, had he happened to wander in mistaking it for Heaven, and perhaps he would have turned tail and hurried out again, preferring his purgatory.
Teresa surveyed the fruition of her dreams, leaning on that hateful black stick. Her dreams? Oh, no, the realities of Millo, aided and abetted by the clever young person, who received a large salary for whisking her pen over figures that could just as well be added on the fingers! And every Saturday this clever young person must play hockey or lacrosse or squash rackets, and—Santa Madonna! she proposed to play football dressed like a man, in short breeches! When Teresa had asked her abruptly one day why women were doing these things, the young person had laughed:
“We’ve got to keep hard, we’re not just breeding cattle, signora.”
Teresa Boselli went back into her parlor, at the door of which progress had stood still. Like Moses of
