Giacomo. Ma che! Macaroni? Roast chicken and salad.

Assunta. Niente! Macaroni!

Giacomo. Roast chicken! You are a pretty one to take the place
of the cook!

Assunta. Roast chicken then! But what are you standing here for
in the hall polishing spoons? If the Contessa could see you!

Assunta dragged her husband by the hem of his white apron through
the great marble-paved dining-room out into the smoke-browned
kitchen in the rear.

"Now where's Tommaso, and how am I going to get my chicken?" she
demanded. "And why, in the name of all the saints, should an
American signorina's illustrious name be Daphne?"


CHAPTER II

An hour later it was four o'clock. High, high up among the
sloping hills Daphne sat on a great gray stone. Below her, out
beyond olive orchards and lines of cypress, beyond the distant
stone pines, stretched the Campagna, rolling in, like the sea
that it used to be, wave upon wave of color, green here, but
purple in the distance, and changing every moment with the
shifting shadows of the floating clouds. Dome and tower there,
near the line of shining sea, meant Rome.