ay in bed a
few days. She was thankful to take refuge. Then she heard a rare
come-and-go. Pancrazio, Ciccio, Giovanni, Maria and a mason all set
about the fire-place. Up and down stairs they went, Maria carrying
stone and lime on her head, and swerving in Alvina's doorway, with
her burden perched aloft, to shout a few unintelligible words. In
the intervals of lime-carrying she brought the invalid her soup or
her coffee or her hot milk.

It turned out quite a good job--a pleasant room with two windows,
that would have all the sun in the afternoon, and would see the
mountains on one hand, the far-off village perched up on the other.
When she was well enough they set off one early Monday morning to
the market in Ossona. They left the house by starlight, but dawn
was coming by the time they reached the river. At the high-road,
Pancrazio harnessed the ass, and after endless delay they jogged off
to Ossona. The dawning mountains were wonderful, dim-green and mauve
and rose, the ground rang with frost. Along the roads many peasants
were trooping to market, women in their best dresses, some of thick
heavy silk with the white, full-sleeved bodices, dresses green,
lavender, dark-red, with gay kerchiefs on the head: men muffled in
cloaks, treading silently in their pointed skin sandals: asses with
loads, carts full of peasants, a belated cow.

The market was lovely, there in the crown of the pass, in the old
town, on the frosty sunny morning. Bulls, cows, sheep, pigs, goats
stood and lay about under the bare little trees on the platform high
over the valley: some one had kindled a great fire of brush-wood,
and men crowded round, out of the blue frost. From laden asses
vegetables were unloaded, from little carts all kinds of things,
boots, pots, tin-ware, hats, sweet-things, and heaps of corn and
beans and seeds. By eight o'clock in the December morning the market
was in full swing: a great crowd of handsome mountain people, all
peasants, nearly all in costume, with different head-dresses.

Ciccio and Pancrazio and Alvina went quietly about. They bought pots
and pans and vegetables and sweet-things and thick rush matting and
two wooden arm-chairs and one old soft arm-chair, going quietly and
bargaining modestly among the crowd, as Anglicized Italians do.

The sun came on to the market at about nine o'clock, and then, from
the terrace of the town gate, Alvina looked down on the wonderful
sight of all the coloured dresses of the