“All the same,” insisted Marietta, “it is very comical to see a cow weep.”
“At any rate,” retorted Peter, “it is not in the least comical to hear a hyaena laugh.”
“I have never heard one,” said she.
“Pray that you never may. The sound would make an old woman of you. It's quite blood-curdling.”
“Davvero?” said Marietta.
“Davvero,” he assured her.
And meanwhile the cow stood there, with her head on his shoulder, silently weeping, weeping.
He gave her a farewell rub along the nose.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Your breath is like meadowsweet. So dry your tears, and set your hopes upon the future. I 'll come and see you again to-morrow, and I 'll bring you some nice coarse salt. Good-bye.”
But when he went to see her on the morrow, she was grazing peacefully; and she ate the salt he brought her with heart-whole bovine relish—putting out her soft white pad of a tongue, licking it deliberately from his hand, savouring it tranquilly, and crunching the bigger grains with ruminative enjoyment between her teeth. So soon consoled! They were companions in misery no longer. “I 'm afraid you are a Latin, after all,” he said, and left her with a sense of disappointment.