“Da mangiare! Ma! Not a thing in the house.”
“The nearest inn?”
“Six miles on.”
“I suppose I must go to bed supperless, then,” I sighed, drawing my water-soaked bundle from beneath my coat.
“Bed!” cried the landlord. “You cannot sleep here. I keep no lodging-house.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Do you think I am going on in this flood?”
“I keep no lodging-house,” repeated the host stubbornly.
I sat down on a bench, determined that no three Italians should throw me out without a struggle. One by one, they came forward to try coaxing, growling, and shouting at me, shaking their fists in my face. I stuck stubbornly in my place. The landlord was ready to weep, when one of his countrymen drew me to the window and offered to let me stay in his barn across the way. I made out through the storm the dim outline of a building, and, catching up my bundle, dashed with the native across the road and into a stone hovel. I could feel under my feet that the floor was nothing but the bare ground. An American cow would balk at the door of the house of a mountain peasant of Italy; she would have fled bellowing if she had seen the inside of the barn that came to view when my companion lighted a lantern. He pointed to a heap of corn husks in a corner behind the oxen and donkeys. Then, fearful of losing a moment over the wine with his fellows, he gave the lantern a shake that put out the light, and, leaving me in utter darkness, hurried away.
I felt my way toward the husks, narrowly missed knocking down the last donkey in the row, and was about to throw myself down on the heap, when a man’s voice at my feet shouted a word that I did not catch. Being in Italy, I answered in Italian:
“Che avete? Voglio dormire qui.”