You have to pay the nurse, and that takes a great
deal. While you are here it would cause talk if I came to live in your
home to care for your mother but if you go away I can do so without
comment and it will cost nothing. Perhaps you will find Vito. If not you
will soon make enough to send for both your mother and me."
"You are a good girl," he answered, kissing her, "but I could not shift
the responsibility of my mother to your shoulders. Still, I will talk to
Father Giuseppi about it."
The priest thought well of the plan (he was a little excited over
America himself), and agreed to break the matter to the mother.
She begged Toni piteously not to go. He was her only surviving son. Vito
was dead. Let him but wait a little while and she would not be there to
stand in his way. Then the priest added his personal assurance that it
would be for the best, and the mother finally gave way. Toni was obliged
to tear himself away by force from the arms of the old woman lying upon
the bed, and her feeble sobs echoed in his ears as he trudged down the
road with the scarf Nicoletta had worked about his neck, and a small
bundle of his tools and most precious possessions on his shoulder.
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