Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/90

 played with the sails, with the surf, with the crystals of the salt, with anything rather than with the children, who, compared with her, were very timid, and were afraid of her, they could not have well told why, except that once, when one of them, twice her age, had worried Leone, she had darted into the hut and rushed out of it with a burning brand, which she would have hurled into the face of the boy who had hurt the dog if the women had not flung themselves on her.

When Joconda, who was absent that day, returned and heard, she trembled again. 'She is of Saturnino's blood,' she thought with fear. She was herself so old; she felt unequal to the task of training this lion-cub to lie down amidst the folded lambs.

The child certainly was not tender, and could be very fierce.

She liked best to be alone and to be always in movement; she never cared to be still, except in the church when there was a requiem or a choral mass, and the sounds went floating away into the dark dimly lit place and mingled with the sounds of the seas and the winds without. Then she would sit motionless, and sometimes her voice would