The three visited a few villas, going up the alley, as it would be called in America, by the side of the house. The Punchinellos played, and Pappina sang and was paid and fed, but nothing satisfied Guiseppe. He grumbled continually. The harvest made on fete days had spoiled him for small gains.
"I'm sick of picking up meals wherever we can find them, and of sleeping on the hard ground," he said repeatedly to Marta, as though it were her fault that he was enduring discomforts. Guiseppe had been too many years in his home not to miss it. "Some people may like to tramp all over the country and pick up a living like dogs in an alley, but I'm sick of it, I tell you."
It was first Marta, then Pappina who was made to feel his ill–humor. Neither cared to speak either to him or each other as hand in hand they followed Guiseppe. Once in a while he would turn to look behind, with ugly words to one or both.
They made few stops. When told to sing, Pappina made every effort to please Guiseppe, but no matter how well she sang and danced he found fault with her.
They were two days on the road from Amalfi to Sorrento; Guiseppe never once softened toward either Marta or Pappina. It was not to be expected that his wife should resent his treatment, for she was used to it; but Marta was in constant fear that Pappina would lose her temper and there would be trouble. The poor woman was relieved each night when the two were asleep and there had been no outbreak from the child.
Nothing on the road interested Pappina; the luxuriant lemon and orange groves were passed unnoticed as she trudged, worn and footsore, along the hot, dusty road between the high garden walls.
As they neared Sorrento, Marta tried to interest the child.
"Look, carina," she said, "these deep places are called ravines. Years ago when people believed in fairies, they used to say dwarfs lived all about Sorrento in these deep ravines that enclose it."