Indeed, it was not wanted yet: the accomplishments of young ladies are
taught at a very moderate rate at Montemirto: and as to clothes, which
you mention, a pair of wooden clogs, with pretty red tips, costs
sixty-five centimes, and ought to last three years, if the owner is
careful to carry them on her head in a neat parcel when out walking,
and to put them on again only on entering the village. The Mother
Superior is greatly overcome by your Excellency's munificence towards
the convent, and much perturbed at being unable to send you a specimen
of your _protegee's_ skill, exemplified in an embroidered
pocket-handkerchief or a pair of mittens; but the fact is that poor
Dionea _has_ no skill. "We will pray to the Madonna and St.
Francis to make her more worthy," remarked the Superior. Perhaps,
however, your Excellency, who is, I fear but a Pagan woman (for all the
Savelli Popes and St. Andrew Savelli's miracles), and insufficiently
appreciative of embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs, will be quite as
satisfied to hear that Dionea, instead of skill, has got the prettiest
face of any little girl in Montemirto. She is tall, for her age (she is
eleven) quite wonderfully well proportioned and extremely strong: of
all the convent-full, she is the only one for whom I have never been
called in. The features are very regular, the hair black, and despite
all the good Sisters' efforts to keep it smooth like a Chinaman's,
beautifully curly. I am glad she should be pretty, for she will more
easily find a husband; and also because it seems fitting that your
_protegee_ should be beautiful. Unfortunately her character is not
so satisfactory: she hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, all
equally. I am sorry to say she shows no natural piety. Her companions
detest her, and the nuns, although they admit that she is not exactly
naughty, seem to feel her as a dreadful thorn in the flesh. She spends
hours and hours on the terrace overlooking the sea (her great desire,
she confided to me, is to get to the sea--to get _back to the