Shutters flew open. Heads popped out. Voices shouted.
"Look! Look what Giorgio brings home! A white scarecrow!" And the children made a sing-song of it. "A white scarecrow! A white scarecrow!"
"Hey, Giorgio! She's got ribs like a washboard!"
"If you sell her for nothing, I wouldn't buy."
The jokes were all good natured, and in high spirits Giorgio leaped from Gaudenzia's back and led her to Pippa's stable. But Pippa was not there. In her place stood a red motor scooter with Babbo's old cap on the handle bars.
For a moment Giorgio felt grief. Then he wiped it away as if it were a cobweb. He had to think ahead now. "It is better Pippa is not here," he said to the mare. "Nobody now can be jealous." He showed Gaudenzia around, showed her the old donkey cart and the trunk with the oats in it and the big wide windows. "You have only a little alley for view," he explained, "but nicer than Doctor Celli's stable with windows too high for seeing out. No?"
As he took off her bridle, she rubbed her head against him where the leathers had been. He sighed happily, feeling singled out and special again. "At last you have come to me!" he said. Then he went to the trunk and scooped up a measure of grain. Before pouring it into the manger he sifted it between his fingers, removing the dried grasshoppers and beetles.
It was late evening when his family returned home from the farm where they had been gathering grapes. But they all had to see the mare, and admire her points, even though she was not in a welcoming mood.
That night when Giorgio went to bed in the family bedroom he did not mind that Emilio, with arms and legs flung wide, slept crosswise, taking up most of the bed. As the wind blew cool, he pulled up the cover, making it snug about Emilio's back. It was good to feel cozy and warm and welcome; good to belong to a family again.
Before he dozed off, he saw through the open window a fingernail moon far away above the mountain. A new moon, a new mare, a new beginning....