"Why?"

"Why! Because I thought you were a lazy boy."

He laughed. All his brown face gave itself up to laughter--eyes,
teeth, lips, cheeks, chin. His whole body seemed to be laughing. The
idea of his being lazy seemed to delight his whole spirit.

"You would have been lazy if you hadn't done what I told you," said
Vere, emphatically, forcing her words through his merriment with
determination. "You know you would."

"I never heard you call, Signorina."

"You didn't?"

He shook his head several times, bent down, dipped his fingers in the
sea, put them to his lips: "I say it."

"Really?"

There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She felt dethroned.

"But then, you haven't earned these," she said, looking at him almost
with rebuke, "if you went in of your own accord."

"I go in because it is my mestiere, Signorina," the boy said, simply.
"I go in by force."