heir bosoms; flowers came, verses,
platters of Urbino, Gubbio, Faenza. She was saluted in the street,
followed to the church door, waited for at the coming out from mass. It
came, more or less, to this, that whenever she went abroad by ways where
the honourable might pass, her going resembled that of the processional
Host rather than of a respectable young woman. Her friends were no
protection: the girls thought it fun, courted it, found stuff in it for
giggling and peering with the eyes into dark corners; the lads of her
station shrugged at it, then sulked, and at last fairly fought shy of
such a conspicuous mate.

Ippolita herself tried to laugh it off, but failed absurdly. She became
plaintive.

"What do these signori mean by their my-ladying?" she cried to Annina,
her bosom friend. "Why do they send me these things? Platters! What use
are platters to the likes of us, who as often as not have nothing to put
on them?"

Annina looked demurely. "It is easy to see what they want of thee,
dearest. What does a gentleman always want of a poor girl that takes his
fancy?"

Ippolita tossed her high head.

"Eh!" she snapped. "They may fill the house with crockery at that rate.
I'm not rubbish!"

She was not; but she wronged her adorers, who neither thought it nor
hoped it of her. Messer Alessandro was not growing his nails for that
sort of ware; nor could he have treated the Pope with more respect. He
had never ventured to speak, though he had never failed to salute her.
What he wrote was chiefly in verse, and as Ippolita could not read, it
really did not much matter what his letters contained. Meleagro had
opened his mouth to pay her a compliment: he won a frightened look out
of her blue eyes, a fine blush, and lived upon them for a week. The
ladies were bolder. Some of them had walked with her once in the Prato.
There was very little to say, except that they loved her and thought her
like a goddess. Ippolita was rather scared, laughed nervously, and said,
"Chi lo sa?" Donna Euforbia then told her the story of the original
Ippolita, the Scythian queen; of King Theseus, and the child born to
them in sea-washed Acharnae. The Paduan Ippolita said "Gia!" several
times, and asked if her namesake was a good Catholic. Finding she was
not, she took no further interest in her fortunes than to suppose her
deep in hell for her pains. The ladies asked her to come and be their
queen; she said she couldn't leave her father. They off