lothing and tables and beds are clean.
Plentiful white linen, stockings like snow, and bright dishes and
metals give a look of freshness and show well on the dim background.
Heavy walnut presses, carved and black with age, stood against
the walls, drinking-glasses and candlesticks sparkled on a dark
bureau-top, there was a bright picture or two, and the sunlighted
tinware of a house at the other side of the street threw a cluster of
tiny rays like a bouquet of light in at the window. Silvia received
these sun-blossoms on her head when she placed herself at the lower
end of the table. She pushed the sleeves of her white sack back from
her slim white arms, and began washing the lettuce-leaves in a bowl of
fresh water and breaking them in the towel. The leaves broke with
a fine snap and dropped in pieces as stiff as paper into a large
dark-blue plate of old Japanese ware. A connoisseur in porcelain would
have set such a plate on his drawing-room wall as a picture.

"How does Claudio work?" the mother asked of her son.

"He works well," Matteo replied. "He is worth two of our common
fellows, if he _is_ educated."

"Nevertheless, I should not have employed him," the mother said. "He
has disobeyed and disappointed his parents, and he should be punished.
They meant him to be a priest, and raked and scraped every soldo to
educate him. Now, just when he is at the point of being able to repay
them, he makes up his mind that he has no vocation for the priesthood,
and breaks their hearts by his ingratitude. It is nonsense to set
one's will up so and have such scruples. Obedience is vocation enough
for anything. There should be a prison where parents could put the
children who disobey them."

The Sora Guai spoke sternly, and looked as if she would not have
hesitated to put a refractory child in the deepest of dungeons.

"He was a fool, but he earns his money," Matteo responded, and,
drawing a plate of deliciously fried frogs toward him, began to gnaw
them and throw the bones on the floor.

Silvia gave him the salad, and poured wine and water into the tumbler
for him, while his mother went to the kitchen for a dish of fricasseed
pigeons.

"There's no onion in the salad," Matteo grumbled when she came back.

Silvia uttered an exclamation of dismay, ran for a silvery-white
little onion and sliced it thinly into the salad.

"Forgive me, Matteo," she said. "I was distracted by the thought of
Claudio. It seems such a terrible t