Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/257

 thing himself; 'Joconda wore out a many boots; tramp, tramp, trot, trot, for ever as she did; and too proud-stomached ever to go a scalza'

'There is a trifle of oil, a quarter-barrel; I let her have it last Night of the Kings as I had fetched it in from the country, thinking it only neighbourliness,' said a fourth, who had a year-old baby at her breast.

'And there were little sums I lent, on and off, not much; she put her cross for them; she was a lone creature; one could not be hard. I have got them all fair writ out, and her cross is at home in the book,' said the woman who lived next door, whose husband owned three of the fishing-smacks, and was a strozzino in a little hungry way, i. e. a usurer, who lent out small sums at large interest, and kept his gains in a deep well in the court of his old house, and could never sleep at night for thinking of them, and so was in a fair way to grace a madhouse before long: a man whom Santa Tarsilla cursed as it never had cursed Saturnino.

Musa was still and mute; she heard them; she stood erect in the centre of the floor where the sunlight made a golden glory all about her.