ned with long serpents of ivy and passion-flower.

If they wrote to Uncle Piero of these innovations he would answer little
or nothing. At most he would caution them not to keep the
kitchen-gardener too busy, but to leave him time for his own work. The
first time he came to Oria after the transformation of the little
garden he paused and contemplated it as he had contemplated the six
stocks of maize, and murmured under his breath: "Oh dear me!" He went
out to the terrace, looked at the little cupola, touched the iron bars,
and pronounced an "Enough!" that was resigned, but full of disapproval
of so much elegance, which he considered above the position of his
family and himself. But when he had examined in silence all the nosegays
and bunches of flowers, the pots and the festoons of the hall and the
loggia, he said, with his good-natured smile: "Look here, Luisa! Don't
you think it would be better to keep a couple of sheep with all this
fodder?"

But the housekeeper was delighted that she no longer need kill herself
for dust and cobwebs, and the kitchen-gardener was for ever praising the
wonderful works of "Signor Don Franco," so that Uncle Piero himself soon
began to grow accustomed to the new aspect his house had assumed, and to
look without disapproval upon the little cupola, which, indeed, afforded
a most grateful shade. At the end of two or three days he asked who had
made it, and he would sometimes pause to examine the flowers in the
garden, to inquire the name of one or another. At the end of eight or
ten days, standing with little Maria at the door leading from the hall
to the garden, he would ask her: "Who planted all those beautiful
flowers?" and teach her to answer: "Papa!" He exhibited his nephew's
creations to an employe of his who one day came to visit him, and
listened to his expressions of approval with a fine assumption of
indifference, but with the greatest satisfaction. "Yes, yes, he is
clever enough." Indeed he ended by becoming one of Franco's admirers,
and would even listen, in the course of conversation, to other projects
of his. And in Franco, admiration and gratitude were growing for that
great and generous bounty that had vanquished conservative nature, and
the old aversion for elegance of every description; for that same bounty
that at all such opposition rose silently and even higher behind the
uncle's resistance, until it surmounted all, covered all in a broad wave
of acquiescence, or at lea