What do you understand by the following statements?
(a) He smiled uncomfortably. “Just plans, sir,” he answered in a low voice.
(b) Yet in both these boyish faces there was a seriousness which was far beyond their years.
(a) The narrator asked Nicola whether they were saving money for migrating to America to have a better life. On hearing this, Nicola told him that they had some other plans. When the narrator wanted to know specifically that what plans they had, Nicola tried to evade him simply by saying ‘just plans’ because he did not want to tell narrator that they save money for getting their sister cured off tuberculosis of the spine in the hospital at Poleta.
(b) The narrator was deeply impressed by the childish and artless expression of the faces of Nicola and Jacopo. They appeared to him to be very innocent and simple. But he also noticed a seriousness on their feces which could never be found on the faces of the children of their age. The narrator means that in their looks and age, they were innocent children but in their thinking and actions they appeared to be quite mature. The seriousness which maturity brings on the faces of responsible elderly persons was present on faces of these two small boys aged thirteen and twelve.