ghtly painted carts and the horses decorated with
flowers and feathers as if for a perpetual May Day, all made up a scene
that was more like a portion of a play than a piece of real life, and
made her almost able to imagine herself upon the stage of a theater.
They had reached a great square, where leafless trees were covered with
a beautiful purple blossom, something like mezereon. From a marble
fountain bareheaded women, with exquisitely arranged dark tresses and
bright handkerchiefs folded shawl-wise round their shoulders, were
drawing water in brass pitchers, and chattering the soft southern
dialect with the pretty tuneful Neapolitan voices that speak like
singing and sing like opera. An equestrian statue of Garibaldi stood on
a pedestal in the midst of a flowerbed of gay geraniums, and below, in
the shadow, a military officer, with a gorgeous pale blue cloak draped
over one shoulder, was talking to two Italian soldiers whose plumed hats
were adorned with shining cocks' feathers.

Miss Bickford, in the van of the Villa Camellia queue, strode on,
taking no notice, beyond a firm shake of the head, of the various
interruptions that met her path--the drivers who offered their carriages
for hire, the smiling women who thrust forward baskets of oranges for
sale, the beguiling children who held out little brown hands and begged
for _soldi_ (halfpennies), and the post-card vendors who spread out sets
of colored views of the neighborhood. It was a good thing that Miss Parr
was at the rear of the procession to keep order, or the girls would have
succumbed to some of these temptations and have broken rank, an
unpardonable offense in the eyes of the school authorities, who wished
to keep up the prestige of their establishment in the estimation of the
town, and to emulate the convent school on the hill, whose pupils
marched along the high street as demurely as young nuns.

Turning out of the piazza they walked alongside a deep natural gorge
which divided Fossato from the open country. This immense ravine was a
fearsome place, with a sheer descent of many hundreds of feet; its
jagged rocks were clothed with bushes and creepers, and clefts and the
openings of caves could be seen amongst the greenery. The girls leaned
on the low wall and shuddered as they gazed down the precipice.

"Antonio and Dominica say that dwarfs live in the caves down there,"
remarked Peachy. "Half the people in the town believe in them, but
they're too af