TRAVEL ADVENTURES
The next few days were spent in traveling northward, sometimes by train, sometimes by automobile, and sometimes behind two small Italian horses.
Each night the Sunbonnet Babies slept in some quaint little town near a great old church or castle built hundreds of years ago.
Some of the towns stood on steep, rocky hills and were surrounded by strong, stone walls. There was always a village well within the walls, where the women and girls filled their graceful jugs with water every morning.
During spring and summer the men and women in these hillside towns work on their fertile little farms in the green valleys below. In the fall the children take long trips to the woods to gather ripe chestnuts to grind into flour, for the Italians are very fond of chestnut cakes.
The most wonderful thing which Molly and May saw on this northward journey was the Leaning Tower at Pisa.
For seven hundred years the beautiful white marble tower has stood there leaning lazily over to one side. Soon after it was started, the ground under it began to sink. The builders straightened it up as well as they could, but when it was finished its top leaned to one side nearly fourteen feet.
The Sunbonnet Babies were almost afraid to go up the winding stairs inside the Leaning Tower. But at last they bravely climbed the three hundred steps, round and round and up and up, until they reached the top where the great bells hang.
Even though a strong railing was around the top of the tower, Molly and May thought they would surely slip off, it leaned so far to one side. But they soon forgot their fears.