ks, or her soft
wisps of hair curling into tendrils, or spreading into green vine
leaves. They usually came home in the splendor of sunset, tired,
happy, the red of Daphne's felt hat, the gorgeousness of Bertuccio's
blue trousers and yellow waistcoat lighting the gloom of the cool,
green-shaded ways. Hermes always ran frisking to meet them,
outstripping by his swiftness the slow plodding of the little ass.
Perhaps the lambkin felt the shadow of a certain neglect through these
long absences, but at least he was generous and loved his rival.
Quitting the kitchen and dining-room, he chose for his portion the
pasture where the donkey grazed, in silence and in sadness, and frisked
dangerously near his comrade's heels. For all his melancholy, the
asinetto was not insensible to caresses, and at night, when the lamb
cuddled close to him as the two lay in the grass in the darkness, would
curl his nose round now and then protectingly to see how this small
thing fared.

So Daphne kept forgetting, forgetting, and nothing recalled her to her
perplexity, except her donkey. San Pietro Martire she named him, for
on his face was written the patience and the suffering of the saints.
Some un-Italian sense of duty stiffened his hard little legs, gave
rigid strength to his back. Willing to trudge on with his load,
willing to rest, carrying his head a little bent, blinking mournfully
at the world from under the drab hair on his forehead, San Pietro stood
as a type of the disciplined and chastened soul. His very way of
cropping the grass had something ascetic in it, reminding his mistress
of Eustace at a festive dinner.

"San Pietro, San Pietro," said Daphne one day, when Bertuccio was
plodding far in the rear, whistling as he followed, "San Pietro, must I
do it?"

There was a drooping forward of the ears, a slight bending of the head,
as the little beast put forth more strength to meet the difficulty of
rising ground.

"San Pietro, do you know what you are advising? Do you at all realize
what it is to be a clergyman's wife?"

The steady straining of the donkey's muscles seemed to say that, to
whatever station in life it pleased Providence to call him, he would
think only of duty.

Then Daphne alighted and sat on a stone, with the donkey's face to
hers, taking counsel of those long ears which were always eloquent,
whether pricked forward in expectation or laid back in wrath.

"San Pietro, if I should give it up, and stay here