"Fools!" said Giovanna scornfully. "You make me sick, both of you."
At this Brontu, quite beside himself, suddenly turned on her:
"What is the matter with you, anyhow?" he demanded in a hard voice. "One would really like to know. Here you are, living on me, and when I offer to kiss you you fly out at me. You ought to be thankful to kiss the very ground under my feet; do you hear me?"
Giovanna grew livid. "What!" she hissed. "Am I treated any better than a servant in this house?"
"Well, a servant; all right, you can just stay one. What else should you be, woman?"
Giacobbe's squint-eyes sparkled at this, but Giovanna, rising to her feet, proceeded to pour out all the concentrated bitterness of the past months. Addressing her husband and mother-in-law, she called them slave-drivers and tyrants; threatened to go away, to kill herself; cursed the hour she had entered that house, and, in the transport of her rage, even revealed the debt to Giacobbe's sister.
At this, the herdsman fell to laughing softly to himself, murmuring words of half-mocking reproach addressed to Aunt Anna-Rosa. On a sudden, however, his face grew black; the sombre figure of Aunt Bachissia appeared in the doorway; she had heard her daughter's angry voice resounding through the stillness of the evening, and had come at once.
"Here," said Aunt Martina, perfectly unmoved, "is your daughter, gone mad to all appearances."
Brontu, completely sobered, was signing urgently to his mother-in-law to come forward and try to calm the furious woman, and Aunt Bachissia was about to do so when Giacobbe suddenly leaped to his feet and threw himself in front of her with an ugly scowl.
"Get out of here!" he ordered, pointing to the door.