ntle, he was startled by a harsh voice close upon his ear.

"Who are _you_--with a murrain to you? No honest buyer, I'll warrant,
but a hanger-on of the dicers--or something worse. Go! dance off, and
find fitter company, or I'll give you a tune to a little quicker time
than you'll like."

The young stranger drew back and looked at the speaker with a glance
provokingly free from alarm and deprecation, and his slight expression
of saucy amusement broke into a broad beaming smile as he surveyed the
figure of his threatenor. She was a stout but brawny woman, with a
man's jerkin slipped over her green serge gamurra or gown, and the
peaked hood of some departed mantle fastened round her sunburnt face,
which, under all its coarseness and premature wrinkles, showed a
half-sad, half-ludicrous maternal resemblance to the tender baby-face of
the little maiden--the sort of resemblance which often seems a more
croaking, shudder-creating prophecy than that of the death's-head.

There was something irresistibly propitiating in that bright young
smile, but Monna Ghita was not a woman to betray any weakness, and she
went on speaking, apparently with heightened exasperation.

"Yes, yes, you can grin as well as other monkeys in cap and jerkin.
You're a minstrel or a mountebank, I'll be sworn; you look for all the
world as silly as a tumbler when he's been upside down and has got on
his heels again. And what fool's tricks hast thou been after, Tessa?"
she added, turning to her daughter, whose frightened face was more
inviting to abuse. "Giving away the milk and victuals, it seems; ay,
ay, thou'dst carry water in thy ears for any idle vagabond that didn't
like to stoop for it, thou silly staring rabbit! Turn thy back, and
lift the herbs out of the panniers, else I'll make thee say a few Aves
without counting."

"Nay, Madonna," said the stranger, with a pleading smile, "don't be
angry with your pretty Tessa for taking pity on a hungry traveller, who
found himself unexpectedly without a quattrino. Your handsome face
looks so well when it frowns, that I long to see it illuminated by a
smile."

"_Va via_! I know what paste you are made of. You may tickle me with
that straw a good long while before I shall laugh, I can tell you. Get
along, with a bad Easter! else I'll make a beauty-spot or two on that
face of yours that shall spoil your kissing on this side Advent."

As Monna Ghita lifted her formidable talons by way of complyin