“I am crazy about you,” Turridu would say; “I am losing my sleep and my appetite.”
“I dont believe it!”
“I wish I was the son of Victor Emmanuel, so that I could marry you!”
“I dont believe it!”
“By our Lady, I could eat you up, like a piece of cake!”
“I dont believe it!”
“On my honor!”
“Oh, mother mine!”
Lola, listening night after night, hidden behind a pot of sweet basil, turning first pale and then red, one day called down to Turridu: “How is it, friend Turridu, that old friends no longer greet each other?” “Alas!” sighed Turridu, “blessed is he who may greet you!”
“If you care to give me greeting, you know where my home is,” answered Lola.
Turridu came back to greet her so often that Santa took notice of it, and closed her window in his face. The neighbors pointed him out with a smile or a nod of the head when he passed by in his riflemans uniform. Lolas husband was away, making a circuit of the village fairs with his mules.
“On Sunday I mean to go to confession, for last night I dreamt of black grapes,” said Lola.
“Wait a while, wait a while!” begged Turridu.
“No, now that Easter is so near, my husband would want to know why I have not been to confession.”
Master Colas Santa
“Ahah!” murmured Master Colas Santa, waiting for her turn on her knees before the confessional where Lola was washing herself clean of her sins. “On my soul, it is not to Rome I would send you to do penance!”
Friend Alfio came home with his mules and a pretty penny of profit, and brought his wife a present of a fine new dress for the holidays.
“You do well to bring her presents,” his neighbor Santa said to him, “for while you are away your wife has been trimming up the honor of your house!”
Master Alfio was one of those carters who wear the cap well down over one ear, and to hear his wife talked of in this fashion made him change color as though he had been stabbed. “Holy big devil!” he exclaimed, “if you have not seen aright, I wont leave you eyes to weep with, you and your whole family!”
“I have forgotten how to weep!” answered Santa; “I did not weep even when I saw with these very eyes Mistress Nunzias son, Turridu, go in at night to your wifes house.”
“Then it is well,” replied Alfio; “many thanks to you.”
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