'Yes, Sor Drea.'
'Ay, ay. You'd have come with us this morning fast enough, I'm thinking, but the girl there wouldn't hear of my sending for you. "He has had a hard day; he will be so tired, father," she said. Tired! Santissima Vergine! and she a sailor's daughter!' The old man chuckled, straightening his back and rubbing his stiffened shoulder joints. 'But, bless you, they're all alike, and even one's own daughter is a woman. Women! they'll pray all day for rain, and be frightened the first minute they see a cloud in the sky.—You'll get your dinner here, Maso.'
Maso, a broad-backed young fellow in a blue jacket, looked up from the wet heap of nets with a smile which showed all his white teeth. 'Ay, Sor Drea.'
'And I must be off home,' said Dino, looking at Italia.
'Ay, lad. You'll stay another time likely. There won't be too much dinner to-day for three of us,' the fisherman said simply, 'and Maso has earned his share. The chestnut is for the man who takes its shell off: that's my way o' thinking.'
'I could not stop in any case; thanking you kindly all the same, Sor Drea. I told my mother I'd be back to dinner. By the way, I was to ask you if it is all settled about our going up there?' he nodded in the direction of Monte Nero.
'Ay, ay. 'Tis settled for Sunday fast enough. Sora Catarina has only to get herself ready. We might have had worse luck, Maso; we might have had worse luck. 'Twas stiffish work with only two of us,' old Drea said, sitting down on the edge of the platform with his feet in the boat to light his pipe. 'Mah! ... che volete? There's nothing like the day after a storm for finding out the colour o' the bottom o' things. There's good in every wind that blows, lad, for a man who knows how to set his sail.'
He thrust a heap of the wet shining fish aside with his foot.
'When there's not so many o' the big there's more o' the little. You know what I'm always telling you. The Devil himself, con rispetto parlando, the Devil himself has a curly tail.'
END OF VOL. I.