It seemed to Maurice that this progress would never end. Presently they
reached a stand covered with women's shawls and with aprons.
"Shall I buy an apron for my mother, signorino?" asked Gaspare.
"Yes, certainly."
Maurice did not know what else to say. The result of his consent was
terrible. For a full half-hour they stood in the glaring sun, while
Gaspare and Amedeo solemnly tried on aprons over their suits in the midst
of a concourse of attentive contadini. In vain did Maurice say: "That's a
pretty one. I should take that one." Some defect was always discoverable.
The distant mother's taste was evidently peculiar and not to be easily
suited, and Maurice, not being familiar with it, was unable to combat
such assertions of Gaspare as that she objected to pink spots, or that
she could never be expected to put on an apron before the neighbors if
the stripes upon it were of different colors and there was no stitching
round the hem. For the first time since he was in Sicily the heat began
to affect him unpleasantly. His head felt as if it were compressed in an
iron band, and the vision of Gaspare, eagerly bargaining, looking Jewish,
and revolving slowly in aprons of different colors, shapes, and sizes,
began to dance before his eyes. He felt desperate, and suddenly resolved
to be frank.
"Macchè!" Gaspare was exclaiming, with indignant gestures of protest to
the elderly couple who were in charge of the aprons; "it is not worth two
soldi! It is not fit to be thrown to the pigs, and you ask me----"
"Gaspare!"
"Two lire--Madonna! Sangue di San Pancrazio, they ask me two lire!
Macchè!" (He flung down the apron passionately upon the stall.) "Go and
find Lipari people to buy your dirt; don't come to one from Marechiaro."
He took up another apron.
"Gaspare!"
"One lira fifty? Madre mia, do you think I was born in a grotto on Etna
and have never----"
"Gaspare, listen to me!"
"Scusi, signorino! I----"
"I'm going over there to sit down in the shade for a minute. After that
wine I drank at dinner I'm a bit sleepy."
"Si, signore. Shall I come with you?"
For once there was reluctance in his voice, and he looked down at the
blue-and-white apron he had on with wistful eyes. It was a new joy to him
to be bargaining in the midst of an attentive throng of his compatriots.