“I don’t care who gets married or who doesn’t, I want my own; I don’t care for anything else.”
“If you don’t care about it, who should? I say—everybody isn’t like you, always putting things off.”
“And are you in a hurry, pray?”
“Of course I am. You have plenty of time to wait, you’re so young; but everybody can’t wait till the cows come home, to get married.”
“It’s a bad year,” said Uncle Dumb-bell. “No one has time to think of such things as those.”
La Vespa at this planted her hands on her hips, and went off like a railway-whistle, as if her own wasp’s sting had been on her tongue.
“Now, listen to what I’m going to say. After all, my living is mine, and I don’t need to go about begging for a husband. What do you mean by it? If you hadn’t come filling my head with your flattery and nonsense, I might have had half a thousand husbands—Vanni Pizzuti, and Alfio Mos-ca, and my Cousin Cola, that was always hanging on to my skirts before he went for a soldier, and wouldn’t even let me tie up my stockings—all of them burning with impatience, too. They wouldn’t have gone on leading me by the nose this way, and keeping me slinging round from Easter until Christmas, as you’ve done.”
This time Uncle Crucifix put his hand behind his ear to hear the better, and began to smooth her down with good words: “Yes, I know you are a sensible girl; for that I am fond of you, and am not like those fellows that were after you to nobble your land, and then to eat it up at Santuzza’s tavern.”
“It isn’t true! you don’t love me. If you did you wouldn’t act this way; you would see what I am really thinking of all the time—yes, you would.”
She turned her back on him, and still went on poking at him, as if unconsciously, with her elbow. “I know you don’t care for me,” she said. The uncle was offended by this unkind suspicion. “You say these things to draw me into sin.” He began to complain. He not care for his own flesh and blood!—for she was his own flesh and blood after all, as the vineyard was, and it would have been his if his brother hadn’t taken it into his head to marry, and bring the Wasp into the world; and for that he had always kept her as the apple of his eye, and thought only of her good. “Listen!” he said. “I thought of making over to you the debt of the Malavoglia, in exchange for the vineyard, which is worth forty scudi, and with the expenses and the interest may even reach fifty scudi, and you may get hold even of the house by the medlar, which is worth more than the vineyard.”