tration: "Ah! Cecco, Cecco!" cried the little girl, pausing as she
beat her tambourine.

_Page 38._]

"Ah! Cecco, Cecco!" cried the little girl, pausing as she beat her
tambourine, "here's a stranger who has no grapes; give them here!"

"But," said Lucy, "aren't they your Mamma's grapes; may you give them
away?"

"Ah, ah! 'tis the _vendemmia_! all may eat grapes; as much as they will.
See, there's the vineyard."

Lucy saw on the slope of the hill above the cottage long poles such as
hops grow upon, and vines trained about hither and thither in long
festoons, with leaves growing purple with autumn, and clusters hanging
down. Men in shady battered hats, bright sashes and braces, and white
shirt sleeves, and women with handkerchiefs folded square over their
heads, were cutting the grapes down, and piling them up in baskets;
and a low cart drawn by two mouse-coloured oxen, with enormous wide
horns and gentle-looking eyes, was waiting to be loaded with the
baskets.

"To the wine-press! to the press!" shouted the children, who were
politeness itself and wanted to show her everything.

The wine-press was a great marble trough with pipes leading off into
other vessels around. Into it went the grapes, and in the midst were men
and boys and little children, all with bare feet and legs up to the
knees, dancing and leaping, and bounding and skipping upon the grapes,
while the red juice covered their brown skins.

"Come in, come in; you don't know how charming it is!" cried Cecco. "It
is the best time of all the year, the dear vintage; come and tread the
grapes."

"But you must take off your shoes and stockings," said his sister,
Nunziata; "we never wear them but on Sundays and holidays."

Lucy was not sure that she might, but the children looked so joyous, and
it seemed to be such fun, that she began fumbling with the buttons of
her boots, and while she was doing it she opened her eyes, and found
that her beautiful bunch of grapes was only the cushion in the bottom of
Mother Bunch's chair.

CHAPTER IV.

GREENLAND.

"SUPPOSE and suppose I tried what the very cold countries are like!"

And Lucy bent over the globe till she was nearly ready to cut her head
off with the brass meridian, as she looked at the long jagged tongue,
with no particular top to it, hanging down on the east side of America.
Perhaps it was the making herself so cold that did it, but she found
herself in the midst of snow, snow, snow. All