serious duty to examine
everything that was to be bought with slow minuteness. It did not matter
whether the goods were suited to a masculine taste or not. He went into
the mysteries of feminine attire with almost as much assiduity as a
mother displays when buying a daughter's trousseau, and insisted upon
Maurice sharing his interest and caution. All sense of humor, all boyish
sprightliness vanished from him in this important epoch of his life. The
suspicion, the intensity of the bargaining contadino came to the surface.
His usually bright face was quite altered. He looked elderly, subtle, and
almost Jewish as he slowly passed from stall to stall, testing, weighing,
measuring, appraising.

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.

"Macche!" 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!
Macche!" (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