He and Maredda managed to see one another for a little while late in the afternoon when work was finished and on Sundays at the first mass in the main church. A quick glance or affectionate word was all he dared. And yet they’d found themselves alone a number of times in the moonlight under the Sinibbio arbor with no fear of being seen; but even then Vanni had done nothing but take her hand, telling her, “You big, ugly girl! I love you so much, I do!”

He’d felt Maredda’s frozen hand tremble in his and knew that even if he had embraced her she wouldn’t have protested, but he didn’t dare. Still, when he was near her, all he thought about was kissing her, and often in mastro Nitto’s shop he told himself he was an idiot, regretting that he hadn’t done it. But then again, Vanni, who’d grown up attached to his mother’s skirts like a girl, had these delicate mannerisms, and no one had any idea where he’d learned them.

Maredda herself had told him countless times when they argued, “It’s true, you won’t ever do anything worthwhile because you’re nothing but a dreamer!”

He would get offended, but everyone said that about him, especially because he played the mandolin like no one else could and because he was the best young man in the neighborhood of Sinibbio.

“It’s not true,” he used to tell her, “that I don’t think seriously about things. Me, the one who doesn’t smoke cigars or drink a glass of wine unless I’m invited to! Just wait! It won’t be long before I can talk to your mother without fear of being thrown out like a good-for-nothing. I’ve already started buying some things, you know.”

In fact, he’d already seen to getting a copper pot and twelve plates, and he’d worked little by little on a pair of dainty shoes with bows of yellow silk that had made Maredda blush with delight when he’d shown them to her.

“You start small and work up to bigger things,” Vanni said. “The time will come when I’ll buy you gold and dresses and then! …”

And he would look deep into her eyes, and she’d get as red as a poppy.

But however hard he worked he couldn’t get ahead. Every now and then, for supplies of grain and wood, he would have to go into the stash that he’d saved up, coin by coin, month by month. And so one winter when he wasn’t able to put anything aside except four gold coins, he began to get discouraged. Gna’ Nunzia, seeing him suffer so, followed him around trying to cheer him up.

“Good times and bad times don’t last all of the time…. You’ll see that this hardship will pass.”