At length the little singer took himself off—took himself off with his red-satin cravat, his horseshoe pin, and his mandolin under his arm. Nounce went back to the house, but Prudence sat awhile longer, using, as she always did, the very last rays of the sunset light for her sewing.
After a while she heard a step, and looked up. "Why, Gooster!—anything the matter?" she said, in surprise.
Unlike the slender little Jo Vanny, Gooster was a large, stoutly built young man, as slow in his motions as Jo Vanny was quick. He was a lethargic fellow with sombre eyes, eyes which sometimes had a gleam in them.
"There's nothing especial the matter," he answered, dully. "I think I'll go for a soldier, Denza."
"Go for a soldier? And the per-dairy?"
"I can't never go back to the podere. She's there, and she has taken up with Matteo. I've had my heart trampled upon, and so I've got a big hankering either to kill somebody or get killed myself; and I'll either do it here, or I'll go for a soldier and get knifed in the war."
"Mercy on us! there isn't any war now," said Prudence, dazed by these sanguinary suggestions.
"There's always a war. What else are there soldiers for? And there's lots of soldiers. But I could get knifed here easy enough; Matteo and I—already we've had one tussle; I gave him a pretty big cut, you may depend."
Seventeen years earlier Prudence Wilkin would have laughed at the idea of being frightened by such words as these. But Mrs. Tonio Guadagni had heard of wild deeds in Assisi, and wilder ones still among the peasants of the hill country roundabout; these singing, indolent Umbrians dealt sometimes in revenges that were very direct and primitive.
"You let Matteo alone, Gooster," she said, putting her hand on his arm; "you go straight over to Perugia and stay there. Perhaps you can get work where Parlo and Squawly are."