rough dark
furniture: an unswept stone floor: iron-barred windows, rather
small, in the deep-thickness of the wall, one-half shut with a drab
shutter. It was rather like a room on the stage, gloomy, not meant
to be lived in.

"I will make a light," said Pancrazio, taking a lamp from the
mantel-piece, and proceeding to wind it up.

Ciccio stood behind Alvina, silent. He had put down the bread and
valise on a wooden chest. She turned to him.

"It's a beautiful room," she said.

Which, with its high, vaulted roof, its dirty whitewash, its great
black chimney, it really was. But Ciccio did not understand. He
smiled gloomily.

The lamp was lighted. Alvina looked round in wonder.

"Now I will make a fire. You, Ciccio, will help Giovanni with the
donkey," said Pancrazio, scuttling with the lantern.

Alvina looked at the room. There was a wooden settle in front of the
hearth, stretching its back to the room. There was a little table
under a square, recessed window, on whose sloping ledge were
newspapers, scattered letters, nails and a hammer. On the table were
dried beans and two maize cobs. In a corner were shelves, with two
chipped enamel plates, and a small table underneath, on which stood
a bucket of water with a dipper. Then there was a wooden chest, two
little chairs, and a litter of faggots, cane, vine-twigs, bare
maize-hubs, oak-twigs filling the corner by the hearth.

Pancrazio came scrambling in with fresh faggots.

"They have not done what I told them, the tiresome people!" he said.
"I told them to make a fire and prepare the house. You will be
uncomfortable in my poor home. I have no woman, nothing, everything
is wrong--"

He broke the pieces of cane and kindled them in the hearth. Soon
there was a good blaze. Ciccio came in with the bags and the food.

"I had better go upstairs and take my things off," said Alvina. "I
am so hungry."

"You had better keep your coat on," said Pancrazio. "The room is
cold." Which it was, ice-cold. She shuddered a little. She took off
her hat and fur.

"Shall we fry some meat?" said Pancrazio.

He took a frying-pan, found lard in the wooden chest--it was the
food-chest--and proceeded to fry pieces of meat in a frying-pan over
the fire. Alvina wanted to lay the table. But there was no cloth.

"We will sit here, as I do, to eat," said Pancrazio. He produced two
enamel plates and one soup-plate, three penny iron forks and two old
knives, and a little grey, coarse sal