Page:Under the shadow of Etna; Sicilian stories from the Italian of Giovanni Verga (IA undershadowofetn00vergrich).pdf/173

Rh it to the farrier; but this did not trouble the padrone, because the harvest was good, and the young ass had earned its cost,—his thirty-two lire and a half. The padrone said,—

"Now, the work has worn him out, but if I could sell him for twenty lire, I should still have made a good thing out of him."

The only person who had a fondness for the young ass was the boy who made it trot over the road on the way from the threshing-floor. And he felt badly when the farrier burnt its legs with red-hot irons, so that the young ass squirmed and flung its tail into the air, and pricked up its ears, and when it ran across the field of the fair, and it tried to break loose from the twisted rope which they fastened to its lip, and it rolled its eyes with the agony, as if it were undergoing torture, when the fartier's apprentice came to change the hot irons, red as fire, and the skin smoked and sizzled, like fish in a frying-pan. But compare Neli cried to his boy,—