"Just see him kick!" cried May. "He does know that he has feet, Anita, and he knows how to use them, too. Isn't he having a good time?"
"And isn't he cunning?" said May.
At last the splashing and rubbing were over, and Giorgio's mother covered him with a warm shawl and carried him into her kitchen. She laid him on a high table, and wound the long linen bands around the little legs once more.
"When Giorgio is a bit stronger," she said, "I shall loosen his bands so that he can kick and play. Then it will not be long before he will be wearing little pants. Now he must go back to his pillow in the courtyard while I get our dinner. We want you little girls to have dinner with us."
"Thank you!" said Molly and May. "We should like to very much. This is a lovely kitchen. Do you keep all of your dishes on the walls?"
"Oh, no, indeed!" Maria answered, laughing. "Mother keeps only her best brass and pewter dishes on the walls. Some of them are very, very old. When Anita and I are married, mother will give them to us and we shall put them on our kitchen walls. We think they are beautiful."
"Yes, they are lovely," said May, "but what an odd stove you have. It looks like a part of the wall."
"It is built right into the wall," said Anita. "Our dinner is cooking in the two black kettles hanging over the fire. It will be ready very soon now."
There was boiled fish in one of the kettles and corn meal mush, or polenta, in the other one. The poorer people of Venice have polenta and boiled fish for dinner nearly every day. Perhaps once a week they have meat and a fresh vegetable, and sometimes macaroni with grated cheese sprinkled over it.
Molly and May liked the polenta and boiled fish very much. It was nicely cooked, and they were hungry. When they had eaten all they wanted, a basket of ripe red cherries was placed on the table. Antonio had brought the cherries home as a special treat for the Sunbonnet Babies and his own little girls. And how they did enjoy them!