These things were told at the olive-mill, the child being present. He listened eagerly. Like some little wild animal which has apparently been tamed, he continually meditated escape. At Fonni, while living with his mother, he had thought of running away to find his father; now he was with his father and he thought of running away to look for Olì. She might be far off, she might be beyond the sea--no matter; he felt capable of finding her by himself. Not that he loved her! No, he could not love one who had given him more blows than kisses, one who had deserted him! Instinctively he felt that was shameful. But then neither did he love his father. Anania could not forget his first impression, the terror and repulsion with which the dark, oily, angry man had inspired him, the man who had kissed him in secret while before the world he stormed at and insulted him. But Aunt Tatàna--ah, she loved him! She washed and brushed and dressed him; she taught him prayers and the precepts of King Solomon. She took him to church, and gave him nice things to eat, and let him sleep with her. Little by little Anania gave her his affection. In a short time he was another boy. He grew fat and gave himself airs; he had forgotten his rough Fonni costume, and wore a nice little suit of dark fustian. He acquired the Nuoro accent, and was knowing and sharp like Bustianeddu. Yet his little heart remained unchanged. It could not change. Dreams of flight, of adventure, of wondrous accidents, were blended in his childish soul with nostalgic yearning for his native place, for the people and the things he knew, for the liberty he had enjoyed, for the unkind mother who had become to him an object of pity and of shame. Though he was better off, the little wild creature suffered under the dislocation of all his habits. He wanted he knew not what. He thought he wanted his mother--because everyone had a mother! because to have lost his mother was not so much grief as humiliation. He understood that his mother could not be with the olive-miller, because he had another wife; well, then, he would rather be left with his mother. He belonged to her; perhaps also he instinctively felt her the weaker and became her champion. As time passed, all these thoughts, these instincts grew fainter, but they did not disappear from his little soul; so also her physical image was transformed in his memory, never obliterated. One day he learned something unexpected about Bustianeddu, whose friendship he had so far endured rather than courted. "My mother's not dead," said this boy, almost boastingly, "she's away on the continent like yours. She ran away one time when my father was in prison. When I'm grown up, I'll go and find her. I swear it. I've an uncle on the continent too. He's a schoolmaster. He wrote that he'd seen my mother in a street and was going to beat her, but the people held him off. It was my uncle gave me this red cap."