If he tired toward the end of the day, he made himself remember the mocking grin of the swineherd and the voice sneering, "You meddling runt, you!" The memory gave him a new burst of strength. He gripped the scythe like one possessed of a demon, and he cut the hay in great wide swaths.
He felt better then, and to reward himself for the extra work he went around to the barn, bridled Bianca, and rode pell-mell into the gathering dusk. It was good to let the wind wash his face, to let the smooth, rocking motion ease his body. He could ride for miles through weeds and grasses without crossing a road, and he exulted in the fearlessness with which Bianca faced the unknown.
Heading back to the stable one night, Giorgio let his bare legs dangle along the mare's sides, and to his surprise he could not feel her ribs.
"Babbo!" he exclaimed when he brought her in. "Bianca is shaping up! But please...."
The father interrupted. "I know, I know, and it is costing dear. Since you grain her night and morning, I grain her extra at noon. A heaping measure I give her, with sugar added."
Giorgio looked up in fear. "Please, Babbo, please don't sell her. I pretend always she is mine. With her, the eyes are not needed. She's got eyes—in her ears, in her feet, in her heart. Babbo, don't sell her."
There was a mark of pain between the father's eyes. "Son," he said, "she goes sure-footed only with you. With the others she stumbles. Her owner before us told me she breaks a man's leg in falling on him. Giorgio, I got nothing to say. Families come first. Emilio and Teria and Mamma got to eat."
Two mornings later the blind mare's stall was empty. Giorgio felt himself too old to cry. He found some of her tail hairs caught in the wood of the manger, and very gently he pulled them out, as if they were still a part of her. He braided them and put them as a keepsake in the back of the big watch his grandfather had left him.
It was not until he arrived in Monticello that evening and his mother said, "Giorgio, maybe somebody today hurt you?" that he wept. The room was empty. Emilio and Teria had gone to their cousins' for supper and the father was unhooking Pippa. Now, alone with his mother, the boy's pent-up feelings burst.