The houses in old Italian towns were built with these arches or little bridges because they formed a support to the tall houses, which were sometimes shaken by earthquakes.
Now it happened that as Dorothy was wondering how it could be that she had missed the post-office, she caught sight of a little white fluffy dog, with brown ears, running up towards the opening of one of these narrow streets.
"My Nino! my Nino!" she exclaimed. "It must be Nino." She did not stop to consider that Nino would have answered her call, if, indeed, it had been he. She did not stop to consider that he was old, and could never have run so fast uphill as this little dog could run. She turned out of the broad street into one of the narrow ones, and chased the little white dog till she was out of breath.
There were not many people about, and no one took much notice of her; and she never stopped till she found herself in the market square of the old town, where, out of breath and exhausted, she sat down on a flight of steps, hopeless of catching the dog, who had now quite disappeared.
An old and dirty-looking church was before her, and several peasant women, with their baskets on their heads, were passing in and out. Red and yellow handkerchiefs were bound round their dark hair, and some of them wore pretty beads round their necks. One or two stopped to look at Dorothy, and talked and made signs to her; but she could not understand what they said, and they smiled at her and passed on. The streets leading up from the market square looked very dim and very steep, and Dorothy began to feel lonely and frightened, especially when an old woman, who might have been a hundred years old, so wrinkled was her face and so bowed her back, stopped before her as she sat on the steps, and began to mumble, and make grimaces, and open her mouth, where no teeth were to be seen, and point at Dorothy with her lean, bony, brown fingers.
Dorothy got up and began to run down towards the town again as quickly as she had come up, when, alas! her foot caught against the corner of a rough stone step before one of the tall houses, and she fell with some violence on the uneven, rugged pavement, hitting her head a sharp blow.
Poor little Dorothy! Getting her own way, and doing exactly as she wished, had brought her now a heavy punishment. While Ella and Willy and Baby Bob, with their two little friends, were enjoying the contents of the luncheon basket at La Colla, Dorothy was lying all alone amongst strangers in the old town of San Remo!