“Isn’t all salt pretty much alike?” Patsy put in soothingly.
“Per Bacco, no! It is all different. The salt from the sea, who knows what nastiness gets into it? This salt, pure and fresh from the bowels of the earth, has soda and other valuable minerals mixed with it; there is no comparison, me spiego?” (Do I explain myself?) “Here, go thou, Teodoro; bring a little bit of salt that these signori may know I speak the truth!”
Teodoro, a handsome bearded young man in high brown shooting boots, had just entered the carriage; we had noticed him walking up and down the platform with a pair of pointers in leash.
“Va bene.” Teodoro nodded good-naturedly to the fat man, evidently his father, left the car, and walked leisurely across the tracks to the freight train, followed by a porter. He touched a cake of shining crystalline salt too big for one man to carry.
“Pronto!” cried the guard, lifting his horn.
“Wait,” roared the angry man, thrusting his head from the window. “Che animale! don’t you see my son?”
“Break it, corpo di Bacco! break it,” laughed Teodoro. The porter pushed the glittering block of salt from the truck. It crashed on the pavement broken in two. Teodoro picked up the larger piece, dusted the splinters from his coat, then without a sign of haste stepped on board.
“They must be great chiefs,” murmured Patsy, as the guard tootled his horn, and the train crawled out of the station.
“A thousand thanks,” I said to Teodoro, as he put the salt in the net over our heads.
“It’s too bad to give so much trouble.”