"We'll talk this thing over if you will meet me to-morrow morning." "You may look for me on the highway at sunrise, and we will go on together." They exchanged the kiss of challenge, and Turiddu, as an earnest that he would be on hand, bit Alfio's ear.

His companions left their sausages uneaten and went home with Turiddu.

There his mother was sitting up for him.
"Mamma," Turiddu said to her, "do you remember that when I went away to be a soldier you thought I would never come back?
Kiss me as you did then, mamma, for to-morrow I am going away again." Before daybreak he took his knife from the place in the haymow where he had hidden it when he went soldiering, and went out to meet Alfio.
"Holy Mother of Jesus!" grumbled Lola when her husband prepared to go out; "where are you going in such a hurry ?" "I am going far away," answered Alfio, "and it will be better for you if I never come back!" The two men met on the highway and for a while walked on in silence.
Turiddu kept his cap pulled down over his face.

"Neighbor Alfio," he said after a space, "as true as I live I know that I have wronged you, and I would let myself be killed if I had not seen my old mother when she got up on the pretext of looking after the hens.

And now, as true as I live, I will kill you like a dog so that my dear old mother may not have cause to weep." "Good!" answered Alfio; "we will both strike hard!" And he took off his coat.
Both were good with the knife.