“He’s almost pulled off your ear!” said Master Bastiano, as he poured water slowly over ’Ntoni’s head; “bites worse than a dog, does Uncle Tino.” ’Ntoni’s eyes were still full of blood, and he was set upon vengeance.
“Listen, Madam Venera!” he said, in the hearing of all the world. “If your daughter doesn’t take me, I’ll never marry anybody.” And the girl heard him in her chamber.
“This is no time to speak of such things, Cousin ’Ntoni; but if your grandfather has no objection, I wouldn’t change you, for my part, for Victor Emmanuel himself.”
Master Zuppiddu, meanwhile, said not a word, but handed ’Ntoni a towel to dry himself with; so that ’Ntoni went home that night in a high state of contentment.
But the poor Malavoglia, when they heard of the fight with Goosefoot, trembled to think how they might at any moment expect the officer to turn them out-of-doors; for Goosefoot lived close by, and of the money for the debt they had only, after endless trouble, succeeded in putting together about half.
“Look what it means to be always hanging about where there’s a marriageable girl!” said La Longa to ’Ntoni. “I’m sorry for Barbara!”
“And I mean to marry her,” said ’Ntoni.
“To marry her!” cried the grandfather. “And who am I? And does your mother count for nothing? When your father married her that sits there, he made them come and tell me first. Your grandmother was then alive, and they came and spoke to us in the garden under the fig-tree. Now these things are no longer the custom, and the old people are of no use. At one time it was said, ‘Listen to the old, and you’ll make no blunders.’ First your sister Mena must be married—do you know that?”
“Cursed is my fate!” cried ’Ntoni, stamping and tearing his hair. “Working all day! Never going to the tavern! Never a soldo in one’s pocket! Now that I’ve found a girl to suit me, I can’t have her! Why did I come back from the army?”
“Listen!” cried old ’Ntoni, rising slowly and painfully in consequence of the racking pain in his back. “Go to bed and to sleep—that’s the best thing for you to do. You should never speak in that way in your mother’s presence.”