There Was A Tremor And Strangely
Pathetic Note In Her Thin High-Pitched Voice, As Of A Woman Speaking
With Effort Between Half-Suppressed Sobs, Or Like The Mournful Cry Of
Some Wild Bird Of The Marshes.
Voice and face were true indications of
her anxious mind.
She was in a perpetual state of worry over some
trifling matter, and when a real trouble came, as when our flock "got
mixed" with a neighbour's flock and four or five thousand sheep had to
be parted, sheep by sheep, according to their ear-marks, or when her
husband tame home drunk and tumbled off his horse at the door instead
of dismounting in the usual manner, she would be almost out of her
mind and wring her hands and shriek and cry out that such conduct
would not be endured by his long-suffering master, and they would no
longer have a roof over their heads!
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. He, too, was an interesting person; small or short for
his years, he was thick and had a curiously solid mature appearance,
with a round head, wide open, startlingly bright eyes, and aquiline
features which gave him a resemblance to a sparrow-hawk.
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