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Now come, there is everything to arrange." There was indeed. Del Dardo would have swooned to see how Annina handled his Unapproachable. Her burnished hair was off with a clip or two of the great shears; a mixture of soot and walnut-juice hid up her roses, and transformed her ivory limbs to the similitude of a tanner's. Ippolita did not know herself.
Mounting my pony I would follow him to the puesto or shepherd's ranche, only to be denied permission: "No, you are not to go to-day: you must not think of such a thing. I forbid you to take the boys to the river this day!" Then Dardo, turning his horse's head, would exclaim, "Oh, caram-bam- bam-ba!" And she, seeing him going, would rush out after us, shrieking, "Don't caram-bam-bam-ba me!
You are not to go to the river this day I forbid it! I know if you go to the river this day there will be a terrible calamity! Listen to me, Dardo, rebel, devil that you are, you shall not go bathing to-day!" And the cries would continue until, breaking into a gallop, we would quickly be out of earshot. Then Dardo would say, "Now we'll go back to the house for the others and go to the river.
Wilt thou mope for ever?" She trembled. "Nay, nay, I'll mope no more, father," says she. "But do thou tell me who my mate is to be." Slyly he looked at her burning face and slyly kissed it. Then he began to sing "Quell' drudo, Messer Amore, Ha scelto un Dardo per cuore! Dardo acerbo, ardente, Che fa gridare le genti Ohimè! Dolce dolore!" She had been a fool indeed to miss such a rebus.
She was like some wild animal trying to save her offspring from the hunters. Never, exclaimed my mother, when the struggle was over, had she passed so painful, so terrible, an hour! And the struggle had all been in vain, and Dardo was taken from us.
This boy, Medardo, or Dardo, was the fifteen-years-old son illegitimate of course of the native woman our English shepherd had made his wife. Why he had done so was a perpetual mystery and marvel to every one on account of her person and temper.
You see, she made me kneel before the crucifix and promise never to take you to bathe without asking her consent. And that's all I've got to do; I never promised to obey her commands, so it's all right." These pleasant adventures with Dardo on the plain were suddenly put a stop to by the war.
She wondered when Alessandro's business was going to begin. As a matter of fact, it had begun. He was now removing several inches of superfluous finger-nail with a sword. For the first day that same Alessandro del Dardo won her to himself by his descant upon the theme, "How a gentleman may dismember himself without dishonour for a lady's love; and how not."
Poor anxious-minded Nata, who moved us both to pity and repulsion, it was impossible not to admire her efforts to keep her stolid inarticulate husband in the right path and her intense wild animal- like love of her children the three dirty-faced English-looking offspring of her strange marriage, and Dardo, her firstborn, the son of the wind.
Dardo, who was teaching us to swim, would then invite us to go to the river to one of two streams within half an hour's ride from home, where there were good bathing-pools! but always before starting he would have to go and ask his mother's consent.
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