“Thank you,” he said, “I am better to-day.  Yes, I could eat something.”

Regina bent lower, smiling happily, and she kissed the boy’s face three times; she kissed his eyes and dry lips.  And he, too, smiled again.

Then she left the bedside and went to a dark corner, where she cautiously moved aside a loose board.  From the recess she took a common tumbler and a bottle of old wine and a battered iron spoon.  She crouched upon the floor, because there was no table; she took two fresh eggs out of the folds of the big red and yellow cotton handkerchief that covered her shoulders and was crossed over her bosom, and she broke them into the glass, and hid the empty shells carefully in the folds again, so that they should not be found in the room.  For she had stolen these for Marcello, as usual, as well as the old wine.  She poured a little of the latter into the glass and stirred the eggs quickly and softly, making hardly any noise.  From the recess in the wall she got a little sugar, which was wrapped up in a bit of newspaper brown with age and smoke, and she sweetened the eggs and wine and stirred again; and at last she came and fed Marcello with the battered spoon.  She had put off her coarse slippers and walked about in her thick brown woollen stockings, lest she should be heard below.  She was very quiet and skilful, and she had strangely small and gentle hands for a peasant girl.  Marcello’s head was propped up by her left arm while she fed him.

She had kept him alive six weeks, and she had saved his life.  She had found him lying against the door of the inn at dawn, convulsed with ague and almost unconscious, and had carried him into the house like a child, though he had been much heavier then.  Of course the innkeeper had taken his watch and chain, and his jacket and sleeve-links and studs, to keep them safe, he said.  Regina knew what that meant, but Paoluccio had ordered her to take care of him, and she had done her best.  Paoluccio felt that if the boy died it would be the will of heaven, and that he probably would not live long with such care and such nourishment as he would get up there in the attic.  When he was dead, it would be time enough to tell the carabineers who passed the house twice every twenty-four hours on their beat; they would see that a sick boy had been taken in, and that he had died of the fever, and as they need never know how long he had been in the inn, the whole affair would redound to Paoluccio’s credit with them and with customers.  But as long as he was alive it was quite unnecessary that any one should know of his existence, especially as the watch and chain had been converted into money, and the money into a fine young cow.  That Marcello could get well on bread and water never entered Paoluccio’s head.