"The clouds are beautiful—but do you think they mean rain?" she asked rather anxiously.
"So our peasants say," replied Amaldi. "They have a rhyme that goes: 'Sol che varda in dree, Acqua ai pe'-'A sun that peeps backward, water over the feet.'"
"Oh, I love this dialect. Would it be very hard to learn?"
"But you should learn Italian, not dialect," he said, smiling.
"I should like to know both. I'd love to talk to the people in their own language. Is that very hard to do? Steering, I mean. May I try?"
He showed her how the wheel worked, indicating a white house far away as a point for her to steer by.
"Oh, how nice! How well she answers—like a little water-horse to a bridle!"
She was charmed to feel how the Fretta glided this way or that at the lightest touch. They had now reached a part of the Lake, near Santa Catterina, where at this hour there is no faintest stir of air. The water spread beneath them so still, so clear, that it was almost as if they were rushing through a golden vacuum. Only the arrowy silver of the Fretta's bow-waves showed that the element through which they fled was water and not air.
Suddenly the Intragnola—the land breeze that blows from shore near Intra—met them full. The sky was fast fading.
"Hadn't you better let me get you that cloak?" said Amaldi. As she turned to let him put his mother's cloak about her shoulders, his heart flashed hot on a sudden. Just so might he be folding a wrap of his mother's about her—if she were his wife. It seemed subtly, wildly sweet to him to see her nestling there in that cloak so intimately associated with his mother—with his daily, familiar life.