One time _la Lupa_ fell in love with a handsome youth who had just served out his time in the army, and had come home and was helping to reap the notary's harvest with her; for surely it means to be in love when she felt the flesh burn under the fustian shift, and on looking at him to experience the thirst that one has in hot June days down in the low-lands.
But he went on with his work, undisturbed, with his nose on his sheaves, and he said to her, "Oh, what's the matter, _gnà_ Pina?"
In the immense fields where the only sound was the rustle of the grasshoppers flying up, while the sun was pouring down his hottest beams perpendicularly, _la Lupa_ was heaping up sheaf on sheaf, and pile on pile, without ever showing any signs of fatigue, without one moment straightening herself up, without once touching her lips to the water jug, so as to stick close to Nanni's heels as he reaped and reaped; and now and again he would ask,--
One evening she told him, it was while the men were sleeping in the threshing-floor, weary of the long day's work and the dogs were howling through the vast black campagna,--
"I want you! you are as handsome as the sun and as sweet as honey; I want you!"
"But I want your daughter--I want the young calf," said Nanni, laughing at his own joke.
_La Lupa_ thrust her hands into the masses of her hair, scratching her temples, without saying a word, and went off and was not seen again in the harvest field. But the following October she saw Nanni again at the time when they were pressing the oil, because he worked near her house, and the rattle of the press kept her awake all night.
"Take a bag of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me."
Nanni was shoveling the olives into the hopper and shouting "Ohi" to the mule to keep it going.
"Do you want my daughter Maricchia?" demanded _gnà_ Pina.
"What dowry will you give with your daughter Maricchia?" replied Nanni.
"She has her father's things, and besides I will give her my house; it will be enough for me if you'll let me have a corner in the kitchen to spread out a mattress in."
"If that is so, we can talk about it at Christmas," said Nanni. Nanni was all grease and dirt from the olives put to fermenting, and Maricchia would not have him on any account; but her mother grabbed her by the hair as they stood in front of the hearth and hissed through her set teeth,--