live lifted the kettle off the spirit lamp. "You like it weak, I
know."

"Yes, and three lumps of sugar. Tell me what happened, _cara_."

"Well, as I came up the stairs that night I noticed a strong scent of
tobacco--good tobacco. Sienese boys smoke cheap cigarettes, and the
older men get black Tuscan cigars, but this was different. It reminded
me of-- Oh, well, never mind. When I came to the first landing I felt
sure there was someone standing close against the wall waiting for me
to go by, and yet when I spoke no one answered. You know how dark it
is on the stairs at night. I could not see anything, but I listened,
and, Carmela, a watch was ticking quite near me, by my ear. I could
not move for a moment, and then I heard Carolina calling--she was
with me, you know, but she had gone up first--and I got up somehow.
Gemma let us in. She said she had been asleep, and I noticed that her
hair was all loose and tumbled. I told her I fancied there was someone
lurking on the stairs, and she said it must have been the cat, but I
knew from the way she said it that she was angry. She lit her candle
and marched off into her own room without saying good-night, and I was
sorry because I have always wanted to be friends with her. I thought I
would try to say something about it, so I went to her door and
knocked. She opened it directly. 'Go away, spy,' she said very
distinctly, and then I grew angry too. I laughed. 'So there was a man
on the stairs,' I said."

Carmela stirred her tea thoughtfully. "Ah!" she said. "How nice these
spoons are. I wish you would tell me who gave them to you."

She helped herself to another cake. "Gemma is difficult, and we shall
all be glad when September comes and she is safely married. She is
lazy. You have seen us of a morning, cutting out, basting, stitching
at her wedding clothes, while she sits with her hands folded. Are you
coming out with us this evening?"

The Menotti strolled down to the Lizza nearly every day after the
_siesta_, and Carmela often persuaded her cousin to accompany them.
The gardens were set on an outlying spur of the hill on which the
wolf's foster son, Remus, built the city that was to be fairer than
Rome. The winter winds, coming swiftly from the sea, whipped the
laurels into strange shapes, shook the brown seed pods from the bare
boughs of the acacias, and froze the water that dripped from the
Medicean balls on the old wall of the Fortezza. Even in summer a
little breeze