flower in the face as she was, fit to be nosegay on any
hearth, posy for any man's breast, sprang in a very lowly soil. Like a
blossoming reed she shot up to her inches by Adige, and one forgot the
muddy bed wondering at the slim grace of the shaft with its crown of
yellow atop. Her hair waved about her like a flag; she should have been
planted in a castle; instead, Giovanna the stately calm, with her
billowing line, staid lips, and candid grey eyes, was to be seen on her
knees by the green water most days of the week. Bare-armed, splashed to
the neck, bare-headed, out-at-heels, she rinsed and pommelled, wrung and
dipped again, laughed, chattered, flung her hair to the wind, her sweat
to the water, in line with a dozen other women below the Ponte Navi; and
if no one thought any the worse of her, none, unhappily, thought any the
better--at least in the way of marriage. It is probable that no one
thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a very good girl; but
she was a washerwoman for all that, whose toil fed seven mouths.

Her father was Don Urbano, curate of Santa Toscana across the water.
This may very easily sound worse than it is. In Don Urbano's day, though
a priest might not marry, he might have a wife--a faithful, diligent
companion, that is--to seethe his polenta, air his linen, and rear his
children. The Church winked at her, and so continued until the Jesuits
came to teach that winking was unbecoming. But when Can Grande II.
lorded in Verona the Jesuits did not, and Don Urbano, good, easy man,
cared not who winked at his wife. She gave him six children before she
died of the seventh, of whom the eldest was Giovanna, and the others, in
an orderly chain diminishing punctually by a year, ran down to
Ferrantino, a tattered, shock-headed rascal of more inches than grace.
Last of all the good drudge, who had borne these and many other burdens
for her master, died also. Don Urbano was never tired of saying how
providential it was that she had held off her demise until Giovanna was
old enough to take her place. The curate was fat and lazy, very much
interested in himself; his stipend barely paid his shot at the "Fiore
del Marinajo," under whose green bush he was mostly to be seen. Vanna
had to roll up her sleeves, bend her straight young back, and knee the
board by the Ponte Navi. I have no doubt it did her good; the work is
healthy, the air, the sun, the waterspray kissed her beauty ripe; but
she got no husband