vely, 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----"

"Ma, Dio mio," Luigi's hands made angry protest against the invective of
Biaggio, "I said only like a man of sense. It is her job, it make no
difference----"

"Blood of the Lamb! Thou hast been in America eight months, and thou
dost not know that they are mad, all quite mad, to work? Never do they
stop. Even after to have fifty years, think, fifty years, still they
work. They work even with the children old enough to keep them. For many
months The Skinny One, she who gives milk to the baby of Giacomo, had
the habit to find him such work, like the foolishness of your painter.
And Giacomo has already three children more than fifteen. Ma----"
Biaggio snorted his contempt. Then suddenly his manner changed. He
leaned back in his chair, and apparently dismissed the subject with a
wave of his fat hand.

"And the little Carolina she is well in this weather of the devil?" But
Luigi did not answer. He was thinking with a pucker between his black
eyes. Biaggio watched him narrowly. At last he spoke, looking fixedly at
the sausages above his head.

"Of course--it--is--possible--you have made a--mistake--but----"

Luigi leaned forward eagerly. "It is possible then to----"

"All things are possible," Biaggio nodded his head at the sausages,
blinking like a large, fat owl. Then he stopped.

"Perhaps, you will tell--to me," Luigi was forced to it at last.

Biaggio gave a little grunt as if he were being brought back from a deep
meditation. "There is a way," he said slowly. "If thou write to her of
the Brown Fur that thou art sick and cannot do the work----"

"But never in my life was I better. Only last week Giacomo said I have
grown fat. How the----"

"It is possible," replied Biaggio wearily, "to be sick of a sickness
that makes one neither thin nor white. With a sickness--of the legs like
the rheumatism, for example, one eats, one sleeps, only one cannot walk
or stand for many hours."

In spite of his efforts to the contrary, the wonder and admiration grew
de