Adone Alba, of the Terra Vergine, and my mother is a kind woman. She
will not grudge you a meal."

The child laughed all over her thin, brown face.

"That will be good," she said, and leapt up out of the water.

"Poor soul! Poor soul!" thought the young man, with a profound sense
of pity.

As the child sprang up out of the river, shaking the water off her as
a little terrier does, he saw that she must have been in great want
of food for a long time; her bones were almost through her skin. He
set his fishing pole more firmly in the ground, and left the net sunk
some half a yard below the surface; then he said to the little girl:

"Come, come and break your fast. It has lasted long, I fear."

Nerina only understood that she was to be fed; that was enough for
her. She trotted like a stray cur, beckoned by a benevolent hand,
behind him as he went, first through some heather and broom, then
over some grass, where huge olive trees grew, and then through corn
and vine lands, to an old farmhouse, made of timber and stone; large,
long, solid; built to resist robbers in days when robbers came in
armed gangs. There was a wild garden in front of it, full of cabbage
roses, lavender, myrtle, stocks and wallflowers. Over the arched door
a four-season rose-tree clambered.

The house, ancient and spacious, with its high-pitched roof of ruddy
tiles, impressed Nerina with a sense of awe, almost of terror. She