“Oh, Nunziata,” called out the neighbors, “were not you afraid at this hour, so far from home?”
“I was with them,” said Alessio. “I was late washing with Cousin Anna, and then I had nothing to light the fire with.”
The little girl lighted the lamp, and began to get ready for supper, the children trotting up and down the little kitchen after her, so that she looked like a hen with her chickens; Alessio had thrown down his fagot, and stood gazing out of the door, gravely, with his hands in his pockets.
“Oh, Nunziata,” called out Mena, from the doorstep, “when you’ve lighted the fire come over here for a little.”
Nunziata left Alessio to look after her fire, and ran across to perch herself on the landing beside Sant’Agata, to enjoy a little rest, hand in hand with her friend.
“Friend Alfio Mosca is cooking his broad beans now,” observed Nunziata, after a little. “He is like you, poor fellow! You have neither of you any one to get the minestra ready by the time you come home tired in the evening.”
“Yes, it is true that; and he knows how to sew, and to wash and mend his clothes.” (Nunziata knew everything that Alfio did, and knew every inch of her neighbor’s house as if it had been the palm of her hand.) “Now,” she said, “he has gone to get wood, now he is cleaning his donkey,” and she watched his light as it moved about the house.
Sant’Agata laughed, and Nunziata said that to be precisely like a woman Alfio only wanted a petticoat.
“So,” concluded Mena, “when he marries, his wife will go round with the donkey-cart, and he’ll stay at home and look after the children.”
The mothers, grouped about the street, talked about Alfio Mosca too, and how La Vespa swore that she wouldn’t have him for a husband—so said La Zuppidda—“because the Wasp had her own nice little property, and wanted to marry somebody who owned something better than a donkey-cart. She has been casting sheep’s eyes at her uncle Dumb-bell, the little rogue!”