Don
Antonino was behind his black counter measuring wine. His wife was with
him now and helping him, a cheerful, clean woman having a fair
complexion, grey hair and round sharp eyes with red lids--a stranger in
Calabria like her husband. She held the neck of a great pear-shaped
demijohn, covered with straw, of which the lower part rested on the
counter. Antonino held a quart jug to be filled while she lowered the
mouth, and he poured the measure each time into a barrel through a black
tin funnel. They both counted the measures in audible tones, checking
each other as it were. The wine was very dark and strong and the smell
filled the low room and came out through the door. Half-a-dozen men sat
at the tables, mostly eating ship biscuit of their own and goat's-milk
cheese which they bought with their wine. They were rough-looking
fellows, generally in checked flannel shirts, and home-spun trousers.
But they all wore boots or shoes, which are in the south a distinctive
sign of a certain degree of prosperity. Most of them had black beards
and smart woollen caps. They were men who got their living principally
by the sea in one way or another, but none of them looked thorough
seamen.
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