Silvia gave him the salad, and poured wine and water into the tumbler for him, while his mother went to the kitchen for a dish of fricasseed pigeons.
“There’s no onion in the salad,” Matteo grumbled when she came back.
Silvia uttered an exclamation of dismay, ran for a silvery-white little onion and sliced it thinly into the salad.
“Forgive me, Matteo,” she said. “I was distracted by the thought of Claudio. It seems such a terrible thing.”
“It would be a much more terrible thing if it were a girl who disobeyed,” Matteo growled. He did not like that girls should criticise men.
“So it would,” the girl responded, with meek readiness.
“I don’t know why I feel so tired to-day,” the mother said, sinking into a chair again. “My bones ache as if I had been working in the vineyard all day.”
“You are not ill, mamma?” exclaimed Silvia, blushing with alarm.
The answer was a hesitating one: “I don’t see what can ail me. It wouldn’t be anything, only that I am so tired without having done much.”