Beatrice and Emilia, strolling together in one of the flowery

lanes up the hillside, between ranks of the omnipresent poplar,

and rose-bush hedges, or crumbling pink-stuccoed walls that

dripped with cyclamen and snapdragon, met old Marietta

descending, with a basket on her arm.

Marietta courtesied to the ground.

"How do you do, Marietta?" Beatrice asked.

"I can't complain, thank your Grandeur. I have the lumbago on

and off pretty constantly, and last week I broke a tooth. But

I can't complain. And your Highness?"

Marietta returned, with brisk aplomb.

Beatrice smiled. "Bene, grazie. Your new master--that young

Englishman," she continued, "I hope you find him kind, and easy

to do for?"

"Kind--yes, Excellency. Also easy to do for. But--!" Marietta

shrugged her shoulders, and gave her head two meaning

oscillations.

"Oh--?" wondered Beatrice, knitting puzzled brows.

"Very amiable, your Greatness; but simple, simple," Marietta

explained, and tapped her brown old forehead with a brown

forefinger.

"Really--?" wondered Beatrice.

"Yes, Nobility," said Marietta. "Gentle as a canarybird, but

innocent, innocent."

"You astonish me," Beatrice avowed. "How does he show it?"

"The questions he asks, Most Illustrious, the things he says."

"For example--?" pursued Beatrice.

"For example, your Serenity--" Marietta paused, to search her

memory.--" Well, for one example, he calls roast veal a fowl.

I give him roast veal for his luncheon, and he says to me,

'Marietta, this fowl has no wings.' But everyone knows, your

Mercy, that veal is not a fowl. How should veal have wings?"

"How indeed?" assented Beatrice, on a note of commiseration.

And if the corners of her mouth betrayed a tendency to curve

upwards, she immediately compelled them down. "But perhaps he

does not speak Italian very well?" she suggested.

"Mache, Potenza! Everyone speaks Italian," cried Marietta.

"Indeed?" said Beatrice.

"Naturally, your Grace--all Christians," Marietta declared.

"Oh, I did n't know," said Beatrice, meekly. "Well," she

acknowledged, "since he speaks Italian, it is certainly

unreasonable of him to call veal a fowl."

"But that, Magnificence," Marietta went on, warming to her

theme, "that is only one of his simplicities. He asks me, 'Who

puts the whitewash on Monte Sfiorito? 'And when I tell him

that it is not whitewash, but snow, he says, 'How do you know?'

But everyone knows that it is snow. Whitewash!"

The sprightly old woman gave her whole body a shake, for the

better exposition of her state of mind. And thereupon, from

the interior of her basket, issued a plaintive little squeal.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024