“I will make a light,” said Pancrazio, taking a lamp from the mantel-piece, and proceeding to wind it up.
Ciccio stood behind Alvina, silent. He had put down the bread and valise on a wooden chest. She turned to him.
“It’s a beautiful room,” she said.
Which, with its high, vaulted roof, its dirty whitewash, its great black chimney, it really was. But Ciccio did not understand. He smiled gloomily.
The lamp was lighted. Alvina looked round in wonder.
“Now I will make a fire. You, Ciccio, will help Giovanni with the donkey,” said Pancrazio, scuttling with the lantern.
Alvina looked at the room. There was a wooden settle in front of the hearth, stretching its back to the room. There was a little table under a square, recessed window, on whose sloping ledge were newspapers, scattered letters, nails and a hammer. On the table were dried beans and two maize cobs. In a corner were shelves, with two chipped enamel plates, and a small table underneath, on which stood a bucket of water with a dipper. Then there was a wooden chest, two little chairs, and a litter of faggots, cane, vine-twigs, bare maize-hubs, oak-twigs filling the corner by the hearth.
Pancrazio came scrambling in with fresh faggots.
“They have not done what I told them, the tiresome people!” he said. “I told them to make a fire and prepare the house. You will be uncomfortable in my poor home. I have no woman, nothing, everything is wrong—”
He broke the pieces of cane and kindled them in the hearth. Soon there was a good blaze. Ciccio came in with the bags and the food.