“She is right,” they said in the village. “Luca would have been back before long, and there would have been the thirty sous a day more to the good for the family. ‘To the sinking ship all winds blow contrary.’”
“Have you seen Padron ’Ntoni’?” added Goosefoot. “Since his grandson’s death he looks just like an old owl. The house by the medlar is full of cracks and leaks, and every one who wants to save his money had better look out for himself.”
La Zuppidda was always as cross as a fury, and went on muttering that now the whole family would be left on ’Ntoni’s hands. This time any girl might think twice about marrying him.
“When Mena is married,” replied ’Ntoni, “grandpapa will let us have the room up-stairs.”
“I’m not accustomed to live in a room up-stairs, like the pigeons,” snapped out Barbara, so savagely that her own father said to ’Ntoni, looking about as he walked with him up the lane, “Barbara is growing just like her mother; if you don’t get the better of her now, you’ll lead just such a life as I do.”
The end was that Goosefoot swore his usual oath by the big holy devil that this time he would be paid. Midsummer was come, and the Malavoglia were once more talking of paying on account because they had not got together the whole sum, and hoped to pick it up at the olive harvest. He had taken those pence out of his own mouth, and hadn’t bread to eat—before God he hadn’t. He couldn’t live upon air until the olive harvest.
“I’m sorry, Padron ’Ntoni,” he said, “but what will you have? I must think of my own interest first. Even Saint Joseph shaved himself first, and then the rest.”
“It will soon be a year that it has been going on,” added Uncle Crucifix, when he was growling with Uncle Tino alone, “and not one centime of interest have I touched. Those two hundred lire will hardly cover the expenses. You’ll see that at the time of olives they’ll put you off till Christmas, and then till Easter again. That’s the way people are ruined. But I have made my money by the sweat of my brow. Now one of them is in Paradise, the other wants to marry La Zuppidda; they’ll never be able to get on with that patched-up old boat, and they are trying to marry the girl. They never think of anything but marrying, those people; they have a madness for it, like my niece Vespa. Now, when Mena is married you’ll see that Mosca’ll come back and carry her off, with her field.”
He wound up by scolding about the lawyer, who took such a time about the papers before he sent in the summons.
“Padron ’Ntoni will have been there to tell him to wait,” suggested Goosefoot. “With an ounce of pitch one can buy ten such lawyers as that.”