It was, in fact, airy and good sized, scantily furnished, but
scrupulously clean, and with two great beds heaped high with the red and
yellow flowered quilts which in Sicilian houses serve the double purpose
of warmth and decoration: not alone do they lend supreme elegance to the
bedrooms, but suspended from the windows, they most gayly embellish the
house front on days of _festa_.
As soon as his belongings were unpacked, Porter, with an eye for beauty
as well as a view to making himself popular, began to draw a pencil
sketch of the little Marcella, a witch of five and beautiful as a doll.
Tiggs and Jenkins saw to the unloading of the mules. But Derby and the
_carabinieri_, with Padre Filippo, after a hasty luncheon of bread,
figs, and goats' milk, pushed on to the mines. Beyond the outskirts of
the little village the land soon grew dead again--not a bird fluttered,
not a living thing was heard. A few patches of green had sprouted here
and there in the lava blackness of the soil, but otherwise the country
seemed under a curse.
A new bend in the road brought them close to a small abandoned
settlement whose windowless houses gaped, staring like lidless eyes, at
the pits which had been dug and left like caverns of the dead--as, in
truth, they were. Yet nature had softened the graveyard with straggling
spots of new green.
Pages:
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250