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Presently, in her disappointed search for remarkable objects, her eyes fell on a man with a pedlar's basket before him, who seemed to be selling nothing but little red crosses to all the passengers. A little red cross would be pretty to hang up over her bed; it would also help to keep off harm, and would perhaps make Ninna stronger.
Quite forgetting that she had thought her speech rather momentous at the beginning, Tessa fell to devouring Ninna with kisses, while Romola sat in silence with absent eyes.
The tears only fell the faster, relieving her swelling heart, as she looked up at the heavenly face, and, putting her hand to her necklace, said sobbingly "I can't give them to be burnt. My husband he bought them for me and they are so pretty and Ninna oh, I wish I'd never come!" "Do not ask her for them," said Romola, speaking to the white-robed boys in a tone of mild authority.
Ninna was a blue-eyed thing, at the tottering, tumbling age a fair solid, which, like a loaded die, found its base with a constancy that warranted prediction. Tessa went to snatch her up, and when Babbo was paying due attention to the recent teeth and other marvels, she said, in a whisper, "And shall I buy some confetti for the children?"
Tessa, who had hitherto been occupied in coaxing Ninna out of her waking peevishness, now sat down in her low chair, near Romola's knee, arranging Ninna's tiny person to advantage, jealous that the strange lady too seemed to notice the boy most, as Naldo did. "Lillo was going to be angry with me, because I sat in Babbo's chair," said Romola, as she bent forward to kiss Ninna's little foot.
Poor Romola, with all her self-sacrificing effort, was really helping to harden Tito's nature by chilling it with a positive dislike which had beforehand seemed impossible in him; but Tessa kept open the fountains of kindness. "Ninna is very good without me now," began Tessa, feeling her request rising very high in her throat, and letting Ninna seat herself on the floor.
A canoe being on board the caravel Ninna, one of the seven Indians brought from St Salvador leaped over, and though pursued by a boat got clear off; and another had made his escape the night before.
Tito had been with her the evening before, and she had kept back the entreaty which she felt to be swelling her heart and throat until she saw him in a state of radiant ease, with one arm round the sturdy Lillo, and the other resting gently on her own shoulder as she tried to make the tiny Ninna steady on her legs.
Romola went to look at the sleeping Ninna, and Monna Lisa, one of the exceptionally meek deaf, who never expect to be spoken to, returned to her salad. "Ah! she is waking: she has opened her blue eyes," said Romola. "You must take her up, and I will sit down in this chair may I? and nurse Lillo. Come, Lillo!"
Yet those in the Ninna, which was a-head of the rest, being the best sailer, were so sure of seeing land that they fired a gun and shewed their colours as a signal to that effect; but the more they advanced, the appearances became the less, and at length vanished away.
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