That good-natured Cousin Anna, instead, took it easily. “Don’t you know Don Giammaria says it is a mortal sin to speak evil of one’s neighbors?”
“Don Giammaria had better preach to his own sister Donna Rosolina,” replied La Zuppidda, “and not let her go playing off the airs of a young girl at Don Silvestro when he goes past the house, and with Don Michele, the brigadier; she’s dying to get married, with all that fat, too, and at her age! She ought to be ashamed of herself.”
“The Lord’s will be done!” said Cousin Anna, in conclusion. “When my husband died, Rocco wasn’t taller than this spindle, and his sisters were all younger than he. Perhaps I’ve lost my soul for them. Grief hardens the heart, they say, and hard work the hands, but the harder they are the better one can work with them. My daughters will do as I have done, and while there are stones in the washing-tank we shall have enough to live on. Look at Nunziata—she’s as wise as an old grand-dame; and she works for those babies as if she had borne them herself.”
“And where is Nunziata that she doesn’t come back?” asked La Longa of a group of ragged little fellows who sat whining on the steps of the tumbledown little house on the opposite side of the way. When they heard their sister’s name they began to howl in chorus.
“I saw her go down to the beach after broom to burn,” said Cousin Anna, “and your son Alessio was with her too.”
The children stopped howling to listen, then began to cry again, all at once; and the biggest one, perched like a little chicken on the top step, said, gravely, after a while, “I don’t know where she is.”
The neighbors all came out, like snails in a shower, and all along the little street was heard a perpetual chatter from one door to another. Even Alfio Mosca, who had the donkey-cart, had opened his window, and a great smell of broom-smoke came out of it. Mena had left the loom and come out on the door-step.
“Oh, Sant’Agata!” they all cried, and made a great fuss over her.
“Aren’t you thinking of marrying your Mena?” asked La Zuppidda, in a low tone, of Maruzza. “She’s already eighteen, come Easter-tide. I know her age; she was born in the year of the earthquake, like my Barbara. Whoever wants my Barbara must first please me.”
At this moment was heard a sound of boughs scraping on the road, and up came Luca and Nun-ziata, who couldn’t be seen under the big bundle of broom-bushes, they were so little.