“Yes, they will help to pay the debt,” said Padron ’Ntoni; “but you can eat an egg yourselves now and then if you feel to want it.”
“No, we don’t need them,” said Maruzza, and Mena added, “If we eat them they won’t be sold in the market by Cousin Alfio; and now we will put duck’s eggs under the setting hen. The ducklings can be sold for forty centimes each.” Her grandfather looked her in the face, and said:
“You’re a real Malavoglia, my girl!”.
The hens scratched in the sand of the court, in the sun, and the setting hen, looking perfectly silly, with the feather over her beak, shook herself in a corner under the green boughs in the garden, along the wall, there was more linen bleaching, with a stone lying on it to keep it from blowing away. “All this is good to make money,” said Pa-dron ’Ntoni, “and, with the help of God, we shall stay in our house. ‘My house is my mother.’”
“Now the Malavoglia must pray to God and Saint Francis for a plentiful fishing,” said Goose-foot meanwhile.
“Yes, with the times we’re having,” exclaimed Padron Cipolla, “they must have sown the cholera for the fish in the sea, I should think.”
Mangiacarubbe nodded, and Uncle Cola began to talk of the tax that they wanted to put on salt, and how, if they did that, the anchovies might be quiet, and fear no longer the wheels of the steamers, for no one would find it worth his while to fish for them any more.
“And they have invented something else,” added Master Turi, the calker: “to put a duty on pitch.” Those to whom pitch was of no importance had nothing to say, but Zuppiddu went on shouting that he should shut up shop, and whoever wanted a boat mended might stuff the hole with his wife’s dress. Then they began to scold and to swear.
At this moment was heard the scream of the engine, and the big wagons of the railway came rushing out all of a sudden from the hole they had made in the hill, smoking and fuming as if the devil was in them. “There!” cried Padron Fortu-nato, “the railroad one side and the steamers the other, upon my word it’s impossible to live in peace at Trezza nowadays.”
In the village there was the devil to pay when they wanted to put the tax upon pitch. * La Zup-pidda, foaming at the mouth, mounted upon her balcony, and went on preaching that this was some new villany of Don Silvestro, who wanted to bring the whole place to ruin, because they (the Zup-piddus) wouldn’t have him for a husband for their daughter; they wouldn’t have him even for a companion in the procession, neither she nor her girl! When Madam Venera spoke of her daughter’s husband it always seemed as if she herself were the bride.