‘What shall I do with my farm if we stay?’ he asked Mr. Hall.
‘You may take a week in the spring to plant grain and another in the fall to harvest it. We can use Boro here.’
At the end of the week Mr. Hall called the family together. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘which is it to be, go or stay?’
‘Stay!’ they shouted joyously.
Michael added, ‘If mother could see us all here I know she would be glad.’
‘Every one is glad,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘Look!’ and he pointed toward the barn, where, on the roof-tree they saw the old stork rise on his toes and clap his beak and his wings with great content.
ELENA’S CIAMBELLA
As Elena scampered over the road, the town clock struck a quarter to four. Elena had an important engagement. Her mother had sent her to draw a jar of water from the public well outside the town; and on the way back she was to stop at the bakery to get her ciambella, which was to come out of the oven at four.
Now a ciambella is an Easter cake, but it is different from any other cake in the world. It is made of flour and sugar and olive oil, and tastes like a crisp cooky. If you are a girl yours will be in the form of a dove; if a boy, in the form of a galloping horse, with a handle of twisted dough from mane to tail to carry it by. Whichever it may be, an Easter egg will be baked inside the ciambella, and the cake will be stuck full of downy feathers, which wave and look festive.
Elena’s cake was an unusually large one, in the shape of a dove, of course, with wings and tail feathers and an open beak. It had been brought to the bakery on a tray by Elena’s mother, and left to be baked.