Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/106

 luck. If one could only see a little way ahead—woe's me!'

'Does it vex you I am not a boy?' said the girl. 'Why should it vex you? I can do all that they can. I can row better than many, and sail and steer; I can dive too, and I know what to do with the nets; if I had a boat of my own you would see what I could do.'

'All that is very well,' said Joconda, with a little nod. 'I do not say it is not. But you have not the boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is someone else's and the haul too.'

The child looked at her from under bent brows. She did not understand the words, she took them literally.

'For me,' she said, 'I do not care whose it is, not at all; I care for the fishing, but what does it matter who has what it brings?'

'It matters when one starves,' said Joconda.

'But we do not starve.'

'No we do not.'

She spoke with curtness, but there was a dimness in her eyes that was not merely