airy
too; for it not only stretched from outer wall to outer wall, but from
the floor to the high slanting roof. The rafters that crossed it here
and there were hung with homely stores--bags of beans and pease, and
slender poles strung with flat cakes of hard bread, far out of the
reach of the children.

The Italian opened her shawl and took out a little brown baby, wrapped
up as stiff as a stick. It was evidently hungry enough, and not at all
satisfied when it was again tucked away under the shawl.

Half by single words and half by signs the two mothers managed to talk
together. Swedish Karin soon knew that Francesca was ill, and was
going home to Italy as soon as her husband had money enough to pay
their passage. There was a wild look in the dark woman's eyes and a
fierceness in her gestures that made Karin almost afraid of her. When
the stranger had put into her pocket a bottle of milk that had been
given her, and a big cake of bread, she got up suddenly to go.

It was evident there was to be another performance--a kind of
expression of thanks for the hospitality received. The bear stood up
and shook paws with the men, we may say; for the brown hands of the
Italians had a strange kind of an animal look about them. The clumsy
creature walked hither and thither, and then towered proudly behind his
two masters, looking down on their heads as if it gave him satisfaction
to prove that he was their superior in size at least.

Francesca now took out her baby, and began to toss it high in the air,
catching it as it fell, and dancing meanwhile as if in delight.

Perhaps the bear took offence that the attention of all beholders was
turned from himself. He made one stride towards the descending baby,
and opened and shut his great mouth with a wicked snap close to the
child.

The Italian mother laughed a loud, wild laugh, and turned her back to
the bear, who put his two strong paws on her shoulder. A heavy blow
from the stout stick of the younger Italian brought him down on all
fours in a state of discontented submission.

Karin had swept her children inside the wide door of the cottage, and
then Francesca was hurried in too with her baby.

The leader of the party pointed after her, and then to his own head,
moving his thin hands first rapidly backwards and forwards, and
afterwards round and round, so describing the confusion in the poor
woman's brain as well as if he had said, "She is as crazy as a loon."