“That is better than to scream like a jay.”
“Well, I do not like them.”
“I should think not.”
“Why?” asked the girl, suddenly suspicious, and conscious that she had let her temper sweep her farther than she intended.
“Because if you liked them you would be grateful, eh? And gratitude is as rare as a white ant. Ecco!”
Nina smoothed out her skirts and flirted some water towards her lettuces, spilling a good deal over Peppina in the process. She was always horribly untidy. Peppina looked angrily at her, and drew her skirts out of the wet. She hesitated whether to go away in a rage, or to linger and try to hear something more definite. Fernanda’s return, carrying on green leaves a great piece of the snow-white ricotta (curd of sheep’s milk), and in her other hand a stick of spiked arbutus berries, relieved the tension.
“It is for our marchesa,” she said proudly, exhibiting the scarlet berries.
“Do they stay all the winter?” asked Peppina, knowing this to be one of the points on which Cesare was curious, and so swallowing her displeasure.
“Who knows? They do as they like,” returned Nina. “All the forestieri do as they like, and why should ours be different?”
“Perhaps they will go to Naples?”