Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/69

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
IN MAREMMA.
57

more than once, and had cried and sobbed, and become very troublesome. The dog was quiet and sad.

They gave her goat's milk and black bread, and let her and the child and the dog sleep altogether in a room full of hay and straw. She and the baby slept well; the dog but little.

The following morning she resumed her journey, and returned as she had come, only that she had the burden of the infant and the companionship of the animal.

The child was now wakeful, impatient, tyrannous; the dog, as he got farther and farther from his old home, was melancholy, and footsore, and anxious.

'You are like a white lion,' she said to him, and named him Leone: what names either he or the child had borne before she could not tell.

It was still fresh, fine weather, happily for her, for she had to walk much, and it took her several days to return on foot, and the diligence only ran once a week, and she missed it at Monte Murano. She was an old woman, and she became very weary.

It was evening once more when she drew nigh her own village.