Page:Wha Katy Did Next - Coolidge (1886).djvu/239

 of the Madonna, with always a fresh rose beside it in a vase, and at its foot a peasant woman kneeling in red bodice and blue petticoat, with a lace-trimmed towel folded over her hair. Or again it would be a sunlit terrace lifted high on a hillside, and crowded with carriages full of beautifully dressed people, while below all Rome seemed spread out like a panorama, dim, mighty, majestic, and bounded by the blue wavy line of the Campagna and the Alban hills. Or perhaps it might be a wonderful double flight of steps with massive balustrades and pillars with urns, on which sat a crowd of figures in strange costumes and attitudes, who all looked as though they had stepped out of pictures, but who were in reality models waiting for artists to come by and engage them. No matter what it was,—a bit of oddly tinted masonry with a tuft of brown and orange wallflowers hanging upon it, or a vegetable stall where endive and chiccory [sic] and curly lettuces were arranged in wreaths with tiny orange gourds and scarlet peppers for points of color,—it was all