Cousin Venera la Zuppidda made no end of a row because she hadn’t been asked to dress the bride’s hair—she, who was going to be a connection of the Malavoglia—and her girl had a sweet-basil friendship with Mena, so much so that she had made up a new jacket for Barbara in a hurry, not expecting such an affront. ’Ntoni prayed and begged in vain that they would not take it up like that, but pass it over. Cousin Venera, with her hair ready dressed, but with her hands covered with flour, for she had begun to make the bread, so that she didn’t mean to go to the party at the Malavoglia, replied:
“You wanted Goosefoot’s wife, keep her! Or her or me; we can’t stay together. The Malavoglia know very well that they have chosen Madam Grace only because of the money they owe her husband. Now they are hand and glove with old Tino since Padron Cipolla made him make it up with Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni after that affair of the fight. They would lick his boots because they owe him that money on the house,” she went on scolding. “They owe my husband fifty lire too, for the Provvidenza. To-morrow I mean to make them pay it.”
“Do let them alone, mother,” supplicated Barbara. But she was in the pouts too, because she couldn’t wear her new jacket, and she was almost sorry she had spent the money for the basil-plant for Mena; and ’Ntoni, who had come to take her home with him, had to go off alone, quite chapfallen, looking as if his new coat were too big for him. Mother and daughter stood looking out of the court, where they were putting the bread in the oven, listening to the noise going on at the house by the medlar, for the talking and laughing could be heard quite plainly where they were, putting them in a greater rage than ever.
The house was full of people, just as it had been at the time of Bastianazzo’s death, and Mena, without her dagger, and with her hair parted in the middle, looked quite differently; so that the gossips all crowded around her and made such a chattering that you couldn’t have heard a cannonade. Goosefoot went on talking nonsense to the women, and made them laugh as if he had been tickling them; while all the time the lawyer was getting ready the papers, although Uncle Crucifix had said that there was time enough yet to send the summons. Even Padron Cipolla permitted himself a joke or two, at which no one laughed but his son Brasi; and everybody spoke at once; while the boys struggled on the floor for beans and chestnuts. Even La Longa, poor woman, had forgotten her troubles for the moment, so pleased was she; and Padron ’Ntoni sat on the low wall, nodding his head in assent to everybody and smiling to himself.
“Take care that this time you don’t give your drink to your trousers, which are not thirsty,” said Padron Cipolla to his son.
“The party is given for Cousin Mena,” said Nunziata, “but she doesn’t seem to enjoy it as the others do.”
At which Cousin Anna made as if she had dropped the flask which she had in her hand, in which there was still nearly a half-pint of wine, and called out: “Here’s luck, here’s luck! ‘Where there are shards there is feasting,’ and ‘Spilled wine is of good omen.’”
“A little more and I should have had it on my new trousers this time too,” growled Brasi, who, since his misfortune to his new clothes, had become very cautious.
Goosefoot sat astride of the wall, with the glass between his legs (it seemed to him as if he were already the master, because of that, summons he meant to send), and called out, “To-day there’s nobody at the tavern, not even Rocco Spatu; today all the fun’s here, the same as if we were at Santuzza’s.”
From the wall where he sat Goosefoot could see a group of people who stood talking together by the fountain, with faces as serious as if the world were coming to an end. At the druggist’s shop there were the usual idlers with the journal, talking and shaking their fists in each other’s faces, as if they were coming to blows the next minute; while Don Giammaria laughed, and took snuff with a satisfaction visible even at that distance.