“Those are the stallions, accustomed to free gallops across their native plains. They cannot bear inaction. Some of them can hear the mares neighing in the adjoining boxes. And they answer them by neighing and beating their tails against the walls.”
She turned pale again while he spoke.
“Is it the sun again?” he inquired.
“The heat, the heat....”
Dark flushes dyed her cheeks, leaving them paler than before, with a feverish pallor. She tried to moisten her lips with the wet handkerchief; they were as dry as if the wind had cut them. The arm that rested on Andrea’s weighed heavily.
“Shall we enter that large building, Signor Andrea? At least we shall be out of the sun there. Do you know what I feel? Myriads of pricks under my skin, as close together and as sharp as needle-points. I think the cool shade will stop it.”
They entered a sort of large ground-floor barn with a slanting roof, where every species of domestic animal disported itself in cages or little hutches. The grave white rabbits, with their pink noses and comic, pendant ears, were rolled up like bundles of cotton-wool at the back of their hutches. You could not see them without stooping, and then they edged still farther back in terror at not being able to run away. The fowls had a long compartment to themselves, a large wired pen, divided into many smaller ones. Big, fat, and motionless, their round eyes, watchful, disappeared now and then under the yellowish, flabby membrane that covered them. They butted their heads against the wire and pecked languidly at bran and barley prepared in little troughs for them, pecking at each other under the wing and cackling loudly, as if that cry were the yawn of a much bored fowl. The turkeys wore a more serious aspect; they never stirred, maintaining their dignified composure.
“Look, Lucia; I always think that turkey-hens pipe for their chicks out in the world.”
“I have never seen one before. Are there no doves here?”
“No, only animals for agricultural purposes. Doves are luxuries. Are you fond of them?”