The priest looked at us with a question in his eye.

"You are of the Church, it may be?" asked he, evidently thinking of our
reverence at the well-stoop.

We shook our heads.

"It matters not," said the easy father; "you are, I perceive, good
Christians. Not like these people of Spellino, who care neither for
priest nor pastor."

"There he goes," said the priest, pointing out of the window at a man in
plain and homely black who went by--the sight of whom, as he went, took
me back to the village streets of Dullarg when I saw the minister go by.
I had a sense that I ought to have been out there with him, instead of
sitting in the presbytery of the Pope's priest. But the father thought
not of that, and the Montepulciano was certainly most excellent. "A
bad, bad village," said the father, looking about him as if in search of
something.

"Margherita!" he cried suddenly.

An old woman appeared, dropping a bleared courtesy, unlike her queenly
name.

"What have you for dinner, Margherita?

"Enough for one; not enough for three, and they hungry off the road,"
she said. "If thou, O father, art about to feed the _lazzaroni_ of the
north and south thou must at least give some notice, and engage another