Page:Under the shadow of Etna; Sicilian stories from the Italian of Giovanni Verga (IA undershadowofetn00vergrich).pdf/171

Rh chief before the apothecary's counter, had on her side no regrets, although she had assisted at the birth of the foal with its black and white skin, as shiny as silk, and which could not at first stand up on its legs, but lay in the warm sun in the courtyard while all the grass which had made it grow so big and strong had passed through her hands!

The only person who missed the foal was its mother, who stretched out her neck toward the entrance of the stall and brayed. But when her udder was no longer painfully distended with the milk, she also forgot about the foal.

"Now you will see," said compare Neli, "that this ass will carry four bushels of corn better than a mule, for me."

And at harvest time he was set to threshing.

At the threshing, the colt, fastened by the neck, in a row with other animals—worn out mules, decrepit horses, paced over the sheaves, from morning till night,