"Cu Gabbi e Jochi e Parti e Mascarati,
Si fa lu giubileu universali.
Tiripi-tumpiti, tumpiti, tumpiti,
Milli cardubuli 'n culu ti puncinu!"

Gaspare burst into a roar of delighted laughter.

"It's the tarantella over again," Hermione said. "You're a hopeless
Sicilian. I give you up."

That same day she said to him:

"You love the peasants, don't you, Maurice?"

"Yes. Are you surprised?"

"No; at least I'm not surprised at your loving them."

"Well, then, Hermione?"

"Perhaps a little at the way you love them."

"What way's that?"

"Almost as they love each other--that's to say, when they love each other
at all. Gaspare now! I believe you feel more as if he were a young
brother of yours than as if he were your servant."

"Perhaps I do. Gaspare is terrible, a regular donna[1] of a boy in spite
of all his mischief and fun. You should hear him talk of you. He'd die
for his padrona."

[Footnote: 1. The Sicilians use the word "donna" to express the meaning
we convey by the word "trump."]

"I believe he would. In love, the love that means being in love, I think
Sicilians, though tremendously jealous, are very fickle, but if they take
a devotion to any one, without being in love, they're rocks. It's a
splendid quality."

"If they've got faults, I love their faults," he said. "They're a lovable
race."

"Praising yourself!" she said, laughing at him, but with tender eyes.

"Myself?"

"Never mind. What is it, Gaspare?"

Gaspare had come upon the terrace, his eyes shining with happiness and a
box under his arm.

"The signore knows."

"Revolver practice," said Maurice. "I promised him he should have a try
to-day. We're going to a place close by on the mountain. He's warned off
Ciccio and his goats. Got the paper, Gaspare?"

Gaspare pointed to a bulging pocket.

"Enough to write a novel on. Well--will you come, Hermione?"

"It's too hot in the sun, and I know you're going into the eye of the
sun."

"You see, it's the best place up at the top. There's that stone wall,
and--"

"I'll stay here and listen to your music."

They went off together, climbing swiftly upward into the heart of the
gold, and singing as they went:

"Ciao, ciao, ciao,
Morettina bella, ciao--"

Their voices died away, and with them the dry noise of stones falling
downward from their feet on the sunbaked mountain-side. Hermione sat
still on the