Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/151

137 horn that brought the girls from all directions with letters for the travelling post-box. By the time the evening meal had been served, lights shone out from the corner café, and a glittering officer sipped his vermuth at the little table outside. Inside, a long seat ran around the wall, on which was painted so luxurious a back that for the moment the stranger was perplexed to find so little comfort in such rich upholstery. The men of the village who sat about the room saluted us as we entered, and doffed their hats to the assemblage as they themselves left. A very pretty custom, but of no attraction for us when we knew that the black kitten was already flying about the well as though the square of seven centuries was designed as a playground for her on the day of her birth. It was at the kitten-hour that a tiny boy came out with mother and father and romped while the older folks sat together on the well steps, and though he nightly planned games of stupendous length, long before the black kitten found the sand-man he was asleep in mother's arms; nor did he open up his heavy eyes when father took him home.

Very little of the unusual occurred in this hill town, though there was a closed theatre in another part of the Palazzo del Podesta that suggested possibilities of an enlivening nature. We had not felt the dulness until the signorina rustled in one evening, and told us of two hucksters who were to sell their wares at auction that night in the square. Immediately we enjoyed the elation attendant upon the first night at the opera, hurried into our seats at the window as though we might lose them, and watched apprehensively for an usher to demand our coupons. The wagon stood against the well, piled high with goods; and a long table, on which a bright lamp burned, was in the front. All was ready for business, but the loiterers were few, and our ardor was a little dampened in finding the audience so poor. The performers were not daunted, however; two cornets were suddenly produced, like rabbits from a silk hat, and the pair started

for a trip around the town. The tune they played was a little thing of their own, but the Pied Piper of Hamelin did not meet with a more generous response. In a quarter of an hour the gathering was most gratifying, and, to judge by our limited acquaintance, highly representative. The small guide and his English-speaking friend sat on the shafts of the wagon; Domenica, in a clean apron, hovered about preserving order, while Sam, in a red cap, stood from start to finish with his nose against the lamp.

The remainder of the evening was one to be taken through half-shut eyelids, with only an occasional uplifting when Domenica's father bought a blue and purple bedspread, and Sam's mother