Both of them, mother and son, now lay side by side, on the hard rocks, beneath the flaming sky, close to the homicidal sea. And now she began to croon the very lullaby which in the past had diffused pure sleep over his infant cradle.
She took up the red sash and said, "I want to dress him."
The cross-grained woman, who still held her ground, assented. "Let us dress him now."
And she herself took the garments from under the head of the dead boy; she felt in the jacket pocket and found a slice of bread and a fig.
"Do you see? They had given him his food just before,--just before. They cared for him like a pink at the ear."
The mother gazed upon the little shirt, all soiled and torn, over which her tears fell rapidly, and said, "Must I put that shirt on him?"
The other woman promptly raised her voice to some one of her family, above on the bluff:--"Quick, bring one of Nufrillo's new shirts!" The new shirt was brought. The mother flung herself down beside him.
"Get up, Riccangela, get up!" solicited the women around her.
She did not heed them. "Is my son to stay like that on the stones, and I not stay there too?--like that, on the stones, my own son?"
"Get up, Riccangela, come away."