Carmella Commands
down-payment, for the option. Either tomorrow I must pay once more, or sell. Maybe I shall sell.”
To Mrs. Coletta this was so much bewilderment. But she smiled and nodded and poured another glass of wine for Tommaso. For was it not right that a wife should smile and nod and pour wine if her husband deigned to tell her anything of his affairs?
But to Carmella it was specific information. In his confusion over having children who talked what he could not talk, yet who talked with him in his own blessed Neapolitan, he often forgot that when he spoke with Maria they could understand. Carmella best of all, of course, for she was knowing of everything. A wonderful girl, his Carmella!
Giuseppe, too, was able to follow almost any speech. Raffaela and Paola, who were native-born Americans, were a little more difficult to understand, for they seemed to speak the language of the land more naturally than they did his own tongue.
Truly it was comforting to pocket the dollars this America produced, and to feel himself a part of its quick-moving ways by dealing in real estate that others already wanted. But after supper, as he smoked his pipe in the Morris chair, he dreamed dreams of a little home outside of Naples, where his wife sitting beside him and children playing around him should have only one common experience, one common language.
[41]
