laims that someone has won. He
orders the drinks and they go at it again.

"But, what _is_ it?" I asked the Signora.

"Eh--oh--just a _Giocho di Bocca_," she returned vaguely, "a game of
bowls--how should I know?"

Beyond the bowling alley is a long, narrow yard with bushes. It would
make quite a charming summer garden with little tables for
after-dinner coffee. But the Signora says that the _Chiesa_, there at
the back of it, objects. The _Chiesa_, I think, is the Judson Memorial
Church on Washington Square. Just why they don't want the Signora to
have tables in her own back yard is not clear. She, being a Latin,
shrugs her shoulders and makes no comment. Standing in the darkness,
there is a real freshness in the air; there is also a delicious,
gurgling sound, the music of summer streams.

"How lovely!" you whisper. "What a delightful, rippling sound."

"Yet, it is the ice plant of the big hotel," says La Signora sweetly.

There is, at Bertolotti's one of the queerest little old figures in
all that part of the world, the bent and aged Italian known
universally as _Castagna_ (Chestnuts), because of the interminable
anecdotes he tells over and over again. No one knows his real name,
not even the Signor or the Signora. Yet he has worked for them for
years. He wants no wages--only a living and a home. In the
aforementioned back yard he has built himself a little house about the
size of a dog kennel. It is a real house, and like nothing so much as
the historic residence of the Three Bears. It has a window, eaves,
weather-strips and a clothesline, for he does his own washing. He
trots off there very happily when his light work is done, and, when
his door is closed, opens it for no one. That scrap of a building is
_Castagna's_ castle. One evening I went to call on him, but he had put
out his light. In the gleam that came from the bowling alley behind
me, something showed softly red and green and white against the wooden
door. I put out my hand and touched that world-famous cross. It was
about six inches long, and only of paper, but it was the flag of
Italy, and it kept watch outside the _Casa Castagna_. I am certain
that he would not sleep well without it.

Probably the most famous Bohemian restaurant in the quarter is the
Black Cat. It is not really more typical than the others,--indeed it
is rather less so,--but it is extremely striking, and most
conspicuous. There is, in the minds of the hypercritical, the sneaking